What Is a Classic Book?

alex atkins bookshelf booksA classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. The classics are books that exert a peculiar influence, both when they refuse to be eradicated from the mind and when they conceal themselves in the folds of memory, camouflaging themselves as the collective or individual unconscious.

Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature, Mariner Books (1987).

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