The things I keep going back to, rereading, maybe they say more about me as a reader than about the books. Love in the Time of Cholera, Pale Fire.
In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.
I don't think it's by accident that I was first attracted to translating two French women poets.
To judge therefore of Shakespeare by Aristotle's rule is like trying a man by the Laws of one Country who acted under those of another.
As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings.
A classical work doesn't ever have to be understood entirely. But those who are educated and who are still educating themselves must desire to learn more and more from it.
A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.
The real use of imaginative reading is precisely to suspend one's mind in the workings of another sensibility.
Your response to literature is to do with maturity; if you don't respond to a book or a poem when you are 12, you might when you are 13.
The best stories in our culture have some sort of subversiveness - Mark Twain, 'Catcher in the Rye.' You provide kids with great stories and teach them how to use the tools to make their own.
