What is supposed to be the very essence of Judaism - which is the notion that it is by study that you make yourself a holy people - is nowhere present in Hebrew tradition before the end of the first or the beginning of the second century of the Common Era.

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

There is no method except yourself.

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

Not a moment passes these days without fresh rushes of academic lemmings off the cliffs they proclaim the political responsibilities of the critic, but eventually all this moralizing will subside.

Reading well is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.

In the finest critics one hears the full cry of the human. They tell one why it matters to read.