from Harold Bloom's book, Genius

."it is hard to go on living without some hope of encountering the extraordinary"

To confront the extraordinary, the genius, in a book, is to benefit almost without cost. Meeting the extraordinary in another person is likely to be deceptive and delusionary.

By "appreciation" I mean something more than adequate esteem. Need also enters into it, in the particular sense of turning to the genius of other in order to redress a lack in oneself, or finding in genius a stimulus to one's own powers, whatever these may emerge as being.

The ultimate anxiety of influence may be .... that one's inspiration may be larger than one's own powers of realization.