the french ambassador to spain, meeting cervantes,congratulated him on the great success and reputation gained by his "don quixote"; whereupon the author whispered in his ear: "had it not been for the inquisition, i should have made my book much more entertaining.

[He] looked exactly like Michael's idea of Don Quixote, 'the luminary and mirror of all knight-errantry', and for that gentle and melancholy knight Michael had always had the greatest affection. Indeed, he was almost his favourite character in literature . . . And he had been created by a man in prison . . . The thought of the great Cervantes, 'the maimed perfection', and of his sufferings so triumphantly endured, was one of the things that had helped to keep him sane many times, he imagined. He was young enough to believe that men go mad, that men die, more easily than in fact they do. He put the point where endurance is no longer possible at a reasonable distance along the way, not at that distant point where John could have told him that it does in fact exist.

While clearly an impregnable masterpiece, Don Quixote suffers from one fairly serious flaw—that of outright unreadability.

Limpias, pues, sus armas, hecho del morrión celada, puesto nombre a su rocín y confirmándose a sí mismo, se dio a entender que no le faltaba otra cosa sino buscar una dama de quien enamorarse; porque el caballero andante sin amores era árbol sin hojas y sin fruto y cuerpo sin alma".

it is better to have red a great work of another culture in translation than never to have read it at all.

One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world was better for this. -Don Quixote.