I was never a monist - always a diversitarian.

John Updike is always fun. And one of my former students, Tom Pynchon. And Harold Bloom, another former student.

The first test any poem must pass is no longer, 'Is it true to nature?' but a criterion looking in a different direction: namely, 'Is it sincere? Is it genuine?'

Jews had an outsider's eye on a lot of Western tradition.

We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity.

The Romantics were whipping boys of the New Criticism, but they appealed to me anyway. I was recalcitrant. It was clear to me that they had thought innovatively.