In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
In science, read by preference the newest works. In literature, read the oldest. The classics are always modern.
What makes a book great, a so-called classic, it its quality of always being modern, of its author, though he be long dead, continuing to speak to each new generation.
The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.
Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.
Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
I'm a big believer in pairing classics with contemporary literature, so students have the opportunity to see that literature is not a cold, dead thing that happened once but instead a vibrant mode of storytelling that's been with us a long time - and will be with us, I hope, for a long time to come.
I still believe nonfiction is the most important literature to come out of the second half of the 20th century.
A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again.
I enjoy classics, but classics are classics for a reason. I prefer to focus on the future. There are a lot of new stories to be heard.
I think all literature should be read as comparative literature. And I think we should write out of what we know, but in the expectation that we can be changed at any moment by something we have yet to discover.