It Is By Extending Oneself, By Exercising

A Superb And Dreadfully Moving Account Of The Glory And Subsequent Murder By The Romanians Of The Jewish City In Odessa. . . . Odessa Is Both Celebration And Lament And Equally Impressive As Both.

I Have Never Believed That The Critic Is The Rival Of The Poet, But I Do Believe That Criticism Is A Genre Of Literature Or It Does Not Exist.

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.

... 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.

No One Yet Has Managed To Be Post-shakespearean.