"Melville instinctively aspired to the grandest scale, and even in his shorter works offers vast inklings and the resonance of cosmic concerns."
– John Updike "Melville seems to promise the very stuff of existence: time, space, air. We don't so much read him as inhale him."
– Geoffrey O'Brien, Village Voice "There are very few stories that, on re-reading after re-reading, seem to become impossibly more perfect, but Herman Melville's eerie, aching story 'Bartleby, the Scrivener' is one such."
– Stuart Kelly, Guardian