To Be A Poet Did

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.

Personality, In Our Sense, Is A Shakespearean Invention.

Sometimes One Succeeds, Sometimes One Fails.

Criticism In The Universities, I'll Have To Admit, Has Entered A Phase Where I Am Totally Out Of Sympathy With 95% Of What Goes On. It's Stalinism Without Stalin.

... 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.