Real Reading Is A Lonely

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.

To Read In The Service Of Any Ideology Is Not, In My Judgment, To Read At All.

No One Yet Has Managed To Be Post-shakespearean.

We Read Not Only Because We Cannot Know Enough People, But Because Friendship Is So Vulnerable, So Likely To Diminish Or Disappear, Overcome By Space, Time, Imperfect Sympathies, And All The Sorrows Of Familial And Passional Life.

Socrates, In Plato, Formulates Ideas Of Order: The Iliad, Like Shakespeare, Knows That A Violent Disorder Is A Great Order.