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.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again.
Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.
A book doesn't have to be a literary classic, of course, to change us forever.
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
Everybody's idea of a great book is different, of course. For me it's one that makes my jaw drop on every page, the writing is so original.
I have no desire to write historical anything or futuristic anything - I want to find a way to get at the essence of what it's like to be alive now. The reason why great novels from centuries ago are still great is because that's what they were doing; it's like a message from another culture.
You can write a great book and be ignored. Literary history is full of classics that were under-appreciated in their own time.
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.
It's great people still care about books, and it's great you can still fashion a life from literature.
'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.