I believe in broken, fractured, complicated narratives, but I believe in narratives as a vehicle for truth, not simply as a form of entertainment, th…

- Stephen Greenblatt

Poems are difficult to silence.

- Stephen Greenblatt

First of all, Shakespeare is about pleasure and interest. He was from the first moment he actually wrote something for the stage, and he remains so.

- Stephen Greenblatt

The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.

- Stephen Greenblatt

The first and perhaps the most important requirement for a successful writing performance - and writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dan…

- Stephen Greenblatt

Now a Protestant confronting a Catholic ghost is exactly Shakespeare's way of grappling with what was not simply a general social problem but one liv…

- Stephen Greenblatt

Art always penetrates the particular fissures in one's psychic life.

- Stephen Greenblatt

Through reading literature we can make ghosts speak to us, and we can speak back to them.

- Stephen Greenblatt

The exercise of reason is not available only to specialists; it is accessible to everyone.

- Stephen Greenblatt