I think the Greek New Testament is the strongest and most successful misreading of a great prior text in the entire history of influence.

There is no method except yourself.

The world does not get to be a better or a worse place; it just gets more senescent.

We can be reluctant to recognize how much of our culture was literary, particularly now that so many of the institutional purveyors of literature happily have joined in proclaiming its death. A substantial number of Americans who believe they worship God actually worship three major literary characters: the Yahweh of the J Writer (earliest author of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers), the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark, and Allah of the Koran.

I don't believe in myths of decline or myths of progress, even as regards the literary scene.

Rebecca Mead's My Life in Middlemarch is a wise, humane, and delightful study of what some regard as the best novel in English. Mead has discovered an original and highly personal way to make herself an inhabitant both of the book and of George Eliot's imaginary city. Though I have read and taught the book these many years I find myself desiring to go back to it after reading Rebecca Mead's work.

No one yet has managed to be post-Shakespearean.