Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention.

I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike - and I don't think there really is a distinction between the two - are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats.

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

Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention.

We read, frequently if not unknowingly, in search of a mind more original than our own.

Literature is achieved anxiety.

... one doesn't want to read badly any more than live badly, since time will not relent. I don't know that we owe God or nature a death, but nature will collect anyway, and we certainly owe mediocrity nothing, whatever collectivity it purports to advance or at least represent.