Criticism starts - it has to start - with a real passion for reading. It can come in adolescence, even in your twenties, but you must fall in love with poems.

What I think I have in common with the school of deconstruction is the mode of negative thinking or negative awareness, in the technical, philosophical sense of the negative, but which comes to me through negative theology.

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

No one yet has managed to be post-Shakespearean.

Reading well makes children more interesting both to themselves and others, a process in which they will develop a sense of being separate and distinct selves.

It is by extending oneself, by exercising some capacity previously unused that you come to a better knowledge of your own potential.

Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.