Anyone with a good classical education could learn Chinese by himself without difficulty. - Arthur Waley

Since the classical language has an easy grammar and limited vocabulary, a few months should suffice for the mastering of it.

I would rather be dead.

I have a theory of my own about what this art of the novel is, and how it came into being. To begin with, it does not simply consist in the author's telling a story about the adventures of some other person. On the contrary, it happens because the storyteller's own experience of men and things, whether for good or ill—not only what he has passed through himself, but even events which he has only witnessed or been told of—has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart.