The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers.

All that a critic, as critic, can give poets is the deadly encouragement that never ceases to remind them of how heavy their inheritance is.

Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention.

Socrates, in Plato, formulates ideas of order: the Iliad, like Shakespeare, knows that a violent disorder is a great order.

It is hard to go on living without some hope of encountering the extraordinary.

In fact, it is Shakespeare who gives us the map of the mind. It is Shakespeare who invents Freudian Psychology. Freud finds ways of translating it into supposedly analytical vocabulary.

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