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
At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of maintaining one's unique voice and creative freedom, especially during challenging times.
Harold Bloom highlights the need to reconnect with our own literary and poetic identities amidst adversity. In times of hardship, clinging to our individuality as creators becomes crucial to not only express ourselves authentically but also to inspire and uplift others through our art.
In practice
During a writer's workshop, to encourage participants to embrace their unique styles.
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.
First you study photography, then you practice photography, then you serve photography, and finally one becomes photography.
When I'm directing a movie, nothing else matters.
If you don't go to Broadway, you're a fool. On Broadway, off Broadway, above Broadway, below Broadway, go! Don't tell me there isn't something wonderful playing. If I'm home in New York at night, I'm either at a Broadway or an Off Broadway show. We're in the theater capital of the world, and if you don't get it, you're an idiot.
Design and color are not distinct and separate. As one paints, one draws. The more the colors harmonize, the more the design takes form. When color is at it's richest, form is at its fullest.
Actors should arouse a sense of wonder because of their ability to exceed what the spectators can envision ever being able to do.
I am not retiring. Writers don't retire. Writers never stop writing.
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