... a [literary] style can be a whole way of existing, so that you exist, for the moment, in perfect sympathy with it: you don't read it so much as listen to it as it sweeps you along—fast enough, often, to make you feel a blurred pleasure in your own speed. Often a phrase or sentence has the uncaring unconscious authority—how else could you say it?—that only a real style has.
An Unread Book, p. 36 - The Third Book of Criticism (1969)
![A [literary] style can be a whole way of existing, so that you exist, for the moment, in perfect sympathy with it: you don't read it so much as...](https://img.libquotes.com/pic-quotes/v1/randall-jarrell-quote-lbg7m2l.jpg)
![A [literary] style can be a whole way of existing, so that you exist, for the moment, in perfect sympathy with it: you don't read it so much as...](https://img.libquotes.com/pic-quotes/v2/randall-jarrell-quote-lbg7m2l.jpg)
![A [literary] style can be a whole way of existing, so that you exist, for the moment, in perfect sympathy with it: you don't read it so much as...](https://img.libquotes.com/pic-quotes/v3/randall-jarrell-quote-lbg7m2l.jpg)
![A [literary] style can be a whole way of existing, so that you exist, for the moment, in perfect sympathy with it: you don't read it so much as...](https://img.libquotes.com/pic-quotes/v4/randall-jarrell-quote-lbg7m2l.jpg)



















