“I was never a monist - always a diversitarian.” — M. H. Abrams

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.

Secular thinkers have no more been able to work free of the centuries-old Judeo-Christian culture than Christian theologians were able to work free of their inheritance of classical and pagan thought. The process... has not been the deletion and replacement of religious ideas but rather the assimilation and reinterpretation of religious ideas.

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.