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
The second, and I think this is the much more overt and I think it is the main cause, I have been increasingly demonstrating or trying to demonstrate that every possible stance a critic, a scholar, a teacher can take towards a poem is itself inevitably and necessarily poetic. – Harold Bloom
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you. – Harold Bloom
Criticism in the universities, Ill have to admit, has entered a phase where I am totally out of sympathy with 95% of what goes on. Its Stalinism without Stalin. – Harold Bloom
The fact that were going through a crisis is an opportunity for Europe to be more coordinated and more integrated. Were actually talking about a European Monetary Fund or euro bonds, about guarantees for countries, about economic governance in the European Union. That shows the strength of Europe. – George Papandreou