I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike

The very best of all Merwin: I have been reading William since 1952, and always with joy.

Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention.

What matters in literature in the end is surely the idiosyncratic, the individual, the flavor or the color of a particular human suffering.

I don't believe in myths of decline or myths of progress, even as regards the literary scene.

Everything in life is arbitrary yet must be over-determined in literature. Jean McGarry knows how to tell a persuasive tale illuminating these truths.

The morality of scholarship, as currently practiced, is to encourage everyone to replace difficult pleasures by pleasures universally accessible precisely because they are easier.