Reading a classic, I believe, ought to entail an element of foreignness...Classics are windows into an epoch, not only in content but in form. - Ilan Stavans

It's a significant fact that upon arriving to Ellis Island, the first thing supposedly immigrants or future immigrants see is that sonnet engraved in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty by Emma Lazarus. That includes the line, Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses. These are the rejects. This is the refuge of the other nations that have been coming here. And yet it is in English that that sonnet receives those newcomers, a language many of them not yet know.

There has been for many years resentment of Spain as the conqueror, but a lot of things about modern Spain have changed, he said. We should talk about the Hispanic world as a much more dynamic body made up of Spain, Latin America, the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and Latinos in the U.S.

I tell my students that education isn’t about facts. It isn’t about theories, either. It is about tracking your thoughts, about witnessing how stories are formed in your mind. It is about allowing the mind not to be clogged, about letting it see not what it does but how it does it. The rules of criticism are the same as the rules of other types of literature. These rules boil down to one: finding the right words to tell the right narrative at the right time. Nothing else matters.