Harold Bloom
Influential critic whose works on Shakespeare provided quotable literary insights, though primarily a scholar.
Quotes by Harold Bloom
Influence is Influenza - an astral disease.
The canon is not a museum but a living tradition.
Falstaff is the most complex character in Shakespeare, perhaps in all literature.
Reading is a form of prayer.
The strong poet's swerve is away from the precursor.
We are all Shakespearean now.
Critics are like parasites on the body of literature.
The Bible is the original Western Canon.
Iago is the spirit of denial in Othello.
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, but critics are the judges.
The death of the author is the birth of the critic.
Lear's tragedy is the tragedy of consciousness.
Influence is a matter of possession, not imitation.
Literature is the history of the spirit.
Shakespeare invented the modern human.
Criticism must be strong, or it is nothing.
The Romantics were the last pagans of literature.
Hamlet's soliloquy is the voice of doubt itself.
To read well is to wrestle with the text.
Bloom's Law: Strong writers misread strong predecessors.