Stephen Greenblatt Quotes

United States, Writer
November 7, 1943

Stephen Jay Greenblatt is an American Shakespearean, literary historian, and author. He has served as the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University since 2000. Greenblatt is the general editor of The Norton Shakespeare (2015) and the general editor and a contributor to The Norton Anthology of English Literature.

Writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig.

Stephen Greenblatt
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 Greenblatt

No special writing rituals. And my desk is usually cluttered.

Stephen Greenblatt
- Writing
- Desk
- Rituals
Art always penetrates the particular fissures in one's psychic life.

Stephen Greenblatt
- Life
- Art
- Psychic
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 Greenblatt
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 Greenblatt
- Writing
- Pleasure
- Worth
Through reading literature we can make ghosts speak to us, and we can speak back to them.

Stephen Greenblatt
- Literature
- Speak
- Ghosts
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 Greenblatt
- World
- Audiences
- Holding

The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.

Stephen Greenblatt
- Pain
- Pleasure
- Delusion
The exercise of reason is not available only to specialists; it is accessible to everyone.

Stephen Greenblatt
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 Greenblatt
- Matter
- Works
- Relation