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

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

Criticism in the universities, I'll have to admit, has entered a phase where I am totally out of sympathy with 95% of what goes on. It's Stalinism without Stalin.

Information is endlessly available to us; where shall wisdom be found?

Shakespeare will not make us better, and he will not make us worse, but he may teach us how to overhear ourselves when we talk to ourselves... he may teach us how to accept change in ourselves as in others, and perhaps even the final form of change.

One measures oncoming old age by its deepening of Proust, and its deepening by Proust. How to read a novel? Lovingly, if it shows itself capable of accomodating one's love; and jealously, because it can become the image of one's limitations in time and space, and yet can give the Proustian blessing of more life.

I am naive enough to read incessantly because I cannot, on my own, get to know enough people profoundly enough.