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
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.
In practice
This quote could be used in a book club discussion to emphasize the role of literature in understanding relationships.
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.
I am naive enough to read incessantly because I cannot, on my own, get to know enough people profoundly enough.
Reading well is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.
Socrates, in Plato, formulates ideas of order: the Iliad, like Shakespeare, knows that a violent disorder is a great order.
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.
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.
The story, from beginning to end, I found again in a heart of a friend.
When I turned 40, I invited Johnny Cash to my party, even though I knew there was gonna be 200 people roasting a pig and wild as can be. He didn't come, but the next day, I got a bowl of chili he'd made and a note that said, 'John, I'd love to come to your party, but that would mean I would have to leave my house.'
You think I'm a fool?" demanded Harry. "No, I think you're like James," said Lupin, "who would have regarded it as the height of dishonor to mistrust his friends.
Friendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.
All I required to be happy was friendship and people I could admire.
Those were happier days, when there was still close friendship at times between folk of different race, even between Dwarves and Elves.' It was not the fault of the Dwarves that the friendship waned,' said Gimli. I have not heard that it was the fault of the Elves,' said Legolas. I have heard both,' said Gandalf[.]
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.