We all fear loneliness, madness, dying. Shakespeare and Walt Whitman, Leopardi and Hart Crane will not cure those fears. And yet these poets bring us fire and light.
Harold BloomRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
We read to connect with others and understand the fragility of friendships in our lives.
Harold Bloom's quote reflects on the importance of reading as a way to form connections and explore the theme of friendship. He suggests that our real-life friendships are often susceptible to various challenges like distance, emotional mismatches, and the complexities of family dynamics. This insight underscores the idea that literature serves as a bridge to understanding the intricacies of human relationships and the emotions tied to them.
Themes
FriendshipReadingConnectionsUnderstandingHuman Experience
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a book club discussion to emphasize the role of literature in understanding relationships.
More from Harold Bloom
All quotes →I am naive enough to read incessantly because I cannot, on my own, get to know enough people profoundly enough.
Harold BloomRead
Reading well is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.
Harold BloomRead
Socrates, in Plato, formulates ideas of order: the Iliad, like Shakespeare, knows that a violent disorder is a great order.
Harold BloomRead
Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight.
Harold BloomRead
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.
Harold BloomRead
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