"A good deal of Paradise Lost strikes one as being almost as mechanical as bricklaying."

"The only way to escape misrepresentation is never to commit oneself to any critical judgement that makes an impact – …"

"It is well to start by distinguishing the few really great – the major novelists who count in the same way as the maj…"

"Not only is he not a genius; he is intellectually as undistinguished as it is possible to be."

"He doesn't know what he means, and doesn't know he doesn't know."

"The "great tradition" does not brook even the possibility of libidinal gratification between the pages as an end in i…"

"The very prevalence of what one might call the ‘outsider than thou’ attitude among intellectuals indicates that there…"

"A powerful critical talent who destroyed his own sense of proportion, Leavis was our brush with totalitarianism: we c…"

"If ever a man came out fighting, Leavis did: this, to many of us is one of his major virtues, because of the importan…"

"The more I thought about it, the more obsessed I became with the idea of a swimming journey. I started to dream ever …"