Classic Quote by Russell Baker

I actually don't like this term, "classic." It's wrong, but we don't have a better word at the moment.

— Esa-Pekka Salonen

What makes a classic is difficult to define. It's entirely subjective, of course. And the term is employed far too promiscuously.

— John Boyne

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions It is classic because of a certain eternal…

— Ezra Pound

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never…

— Edith Wharton

A classic is a classic for a reason. Let's try to create new classics. The idea of repeating ourselves drives me a little crazy.

— Gina Prince-Bythewood

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

— W. E. B. Du Bois

A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway.

— Italo Calvino

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

— Mark Twain

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

— Alan Bennett

I don't like the word ['classic']. It makes you think we didn't do any work.

— Ralph Lauren

A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans.

— Italo Calvino

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

— Italo Calvino