Among the striking ideas that everywhere blossom in Bloom is his view that Shakespeare’s imaginative resources “transcend those of Yahweh, Jesus and … - A. C. Grayling

People not only live by symbols, but die by them, as wars of religion and nationalism attest.

This brings into focus a startling fact: that the practice of contemporary reviewing, whether fiction or non-fiction, owes nothing to self-styled “critical theorists”, those succubi of English Literature departments whose jargonings are read (if they are read at all) only by one another, and who have contributed nothing to the wider world since they hijacked the academic study of literature from its original Quiller-Couchian purpose: which was to educate, liberate, and civilise.
The reason is that the professionalisation of the academy has diverted its form of criticism away from engagement with life.

Prudery expresses itself most forcibly as censorship.