It Is By Extending Oneself,

I Won't Say He [shakespeare] 'invented' Us, Because Journalists Perpetually Misunderstand Me On That. I'll Put It More Simply: He Contains Us. Our Ways Of Thinking And Feeling-about Ourselves, Those We Love, Those We Hate, Those We Realize Are Hopelessly 'other' To Us-are More Shaped By Shakespeare Than They Are By The Experience Of Our Own Lives.

If We Read The Western Canon In Order To Form Our Social, Political, Or Personal Moral Values, I Firmly Believe We Will Become Monsters Of Selfishness And Exploitation.

The Morality Of Scholarship, As Currently Practiced, Is To Encourage Everyone To Replace Difficult Pleasures By Pleasures Universally Accessible Precisely Because They Are Easier.

I Think The Greek New Testament Is The Strongest And Most Successful Misreading Of A Great Prior Text In The Entire History Of Influence.

The True Use Of Shakespeare Or Of Cervantes, Of Homer Or Of Dante, Of Chaucer Or Of Rabelais, Is To Augment One's Own Growing Inner Self. . . . The Mind's Dialogue With Itself Is Not Primarily A Social Reality. All That The Western Canon Can Bring One Is The Proper Use Of One's Own Solitude, That Solitude Whose Final Form Is One's Confrontation With One's Own Mortality.