Indeed the three prophecies about the death of individual art are, in their different ways, those of Hegel, Marx, and Freud. I don't see any way of getting beyond those prophecies.

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

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

Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.

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.

I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.

I am not unique in my elegiac sadness at watching reading die, in the era that celebrates Stephen King and J.K. Rowling rather than Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll.