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A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again.

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

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.

What's my favourite book? It changes all the time.

You don't have to be dead to write a classic, and you don't have to be literary to be smart.

'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.

You can write a great book and be ignored. Literary history is full of classics that were under-appreciated in their own time.

I hope for so much from every book I read. And time and again, I find myself disappointed. I look across my bookshelves and see hundreds of titles which in my memory seem merely mediocre or second-rate. Only occasionally does a novel appear for which I feel a lasting passion, a book that I think could in time become a classic.

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.

The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.