We believed that to understand literature, you had to understand its place in history and culture.

When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas.

When something startlingly new comes up, young people, especially, seize it. You can't complain about that. I think its heyday has passed, but it's had an effect and will continue to have an effect.

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

The survival of artistic modes in which we recognize ourselves, identify ourselves and place ourselves will survive as long as humanity survives.

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.