We read frequently if unknowingly, in quest of a mind more original than our own. - Harold Bloom
Pragmatically, aesthetic value can be recognized or experienced, but it cannot be conveyed to those who are incapable of grasping its sensations and perceptions. To quarrel on its behalf is always a blunder. - Harold Bloom
We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. - Harold Bloom
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you. - Harold Bloom
There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable. - Harold Bloom
Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable. - Harold Bloom
There is no God but God, and his name is William Shakespeare. - Harold Bloom
How to read "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"? Why, very quickly, to begin with, and perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do. - Harold Bloom