People cannot stand the saddest truth I know about the very nature of reading and writing imaginative literature, which is that poetry does not teach us how to talk to other people: it teaches us how to talk to ourselves. What I – Harold Bloom
What we call a poem is mostly what is not there on the page. The strength of any poem is the poems that it has managed to exclude. – Harold Bloom
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you. – Harold Bloom
I would say that there is no future for literary studies as such in the United States. – Harold Bloom
Short fiction is the medium I love the most, because it requires that I bring everything Ive learned about poetry – the concision, the ability to say something as vividly as possible – but also the ability to create a narrative that, though lacking a novels length, satisfies the reader. – Ron Rash