Harold Bloom with some reading material (public domain photo).
After yesterday's blog post, I wanted to share a more positive quote about reading, this time from famed literary critic Harold Bloom (1930-2019). (I discovered Bloom back in college, when I became infatuated with Percy Bysshe Shelley's poetry and bought a Shelley anthology edited by Bloom.)
Here's the quote (source):
"The great poems, plays, novels and stories teach us how to go on living, even when submerged under forty fathoms of bother and distress. If you live 90 years you will be a battered survivor. Your own mistakes, accidents, and failures at otherness beat you down. Rise up at dawn and read something that matters as soon as you can."
