#american author
It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that when I’m in the company of others, there always comes a moment when I’d rather be reading a book.
- Maureen Corrigan
Source:@chanelbagsandcigarettedrags
He is pathologically narcissistic and extremely arrogant. He has a grotesque sense of entitlement, never doubting that he can do whatever he chooses. He loves to bark orders and to watch underlings scurry to carry them out. He expects absolute loyalty, but he is incapable of gratitude. The feelings of others mean nothing to him. He has no natural grace, no sense of shared humanity, no decency.
He is not merely indifferent to the law; he hates it and takes pleasure in breaking it. He hates it because it gets in his way and because it stands for a notion of the public good that he holds in contempt. He divides the world into winners and losers. The winners arouse his regard insofar as he can use them for his own ends.: the losers arouse only his scorn. The public good is something only losers like to talk about. What he likes to talk about is winning.
… He is a bully. Easily enraged, he strikes out at anyone who stands in his way… . He is gifted at detecting weakness and deft at mockery and insult. These skills attract followers who are drawn to the same cruel delight, even if they cannot have it to his unmatched degree… .
His possession of power includes the domination of women, but he despises them far more than he desires them. Sexual conquest excites him, but only for the endlessly reiterated proof that he can grab anything he likes …
Sooner or later, he is brought down. He dies unloved and unlamented. He leaves behind only wreckage. It would have been better had Richard III never been born.
- Stephen Greenblatt on Richard III in “Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics”
Stephen Jay Greenblatt, b. 1943, 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.
