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Stephen Greenblatt Quotes

Stephen Greenblatt Quotes & Quotations
Name:
Stephen Greenblatt
Type:
Critic
Nationality:
American
Birth day:
Birth year:

  • 1
    But I never listen to music while I'm writing. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 2
    But I wanted to make a claim: the claim here is that life is actually compelling and that Shakespeare's life is what he principally had to work with. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 3
    But if Shakespeare himself is maybe about meaning and truth, I don't know, then he is certainly about pleasure and interest, we start with pleasure and interest, but maybe eventually it gets to meaning and truth. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 4
    But the trick of holding off and having all the pieces come together at the moment of the revelation was something I must have learned quite early. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 5
    First of all, Shakespeare is about pleasure and interest. He was from the first moment he actually wrote something for the stage, and he remains so. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 6
    I believe that it is a whole lifetime of work on Shakespeare's part that enabled him to do what he did. But the question is how you can explain this whole lifetime in such a way to make it accessible and available to us, to me. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 7
    I believe that nothing comes of nothing, even in Shakespeare. I wanted to know where he got the matter he was working with and what he did with that matter. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 8
    I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 9
    I wanted to hold onto and exploit the power of narrative. This is not only a book about a great storyteller, but there have to be stories about the storyteller. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 10
    I'm not spitting in my own soup, I love having spent my life thinking about these things-but you don't have to know anything about his life, even though I've just written a biography! Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 11
    I've been at this for 40 years. And, as an academic, I've been content with relatively small audiences, with the thought that the audience I long for will find its way eventually to what I have written, provided that what I have written is good enough. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 12
    It is not that Shakespeare's art is in technicolor and fancy, and that real life is black and white and tedious. The life that Shakespeare was living was the only life he had, and he had to use it to create what he was doing. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 13
    My father who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 14
    No special writing rituals. And my desk is usually cluttered. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 15
    The Shakespeare that Shakespeare became is the name that's attached to these astonishing objects that he left behind. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 16
    Well it is certainly the case that the poems - which were in fact published during Shakespeare's lifetime - are weird if they began or originated in this form, as I think they did, because the poems get out of control. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 17
    What I wanted to do was to get that sense of being in touch with this lost world while holding onto what draws readers and audiences there in the first place. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt
  • 18
    What matters here are the works - finally without them his life would be uninteresting. What matters, that is, are the astonishing things that he left behind. If we can get the life in relation to the works, then it can take off. Stephen-GreenblattStephen Greenblatt