Best.

Indeed, whatever your politics are, whatever your aspirations are, take Dante for your textbook, take Shakespeare for your textbook, take Cervantes or Chaucer or Homer or, indeed, the Bible, not as fundamentalists read it, but as we ought to read it. Take, indeed, the best that has been written for your textbook, and educate yourself from it. I begin this book by saying, Information is readily available to us. Where shall wisdom be found? And the answer, It is to be found where it was always to be found, in the greatest minds and the greatest writers. And they are usually the same--the same. You know, it is to be found in Shakespeare and Milton. It is to be found in William Blake. It is to be found in Dante. It is to be found in Cervantes. I wouldn't mind so-called multiculturalism at all, if, say, for Hispanic purposes, they were to replace Shakespeare even by Cervantes. I would say, Fine. I have no quarrel with this. Cervantes is an almost equal eminence. La Quijote and the other writings of Cervantes also touch the limits of human art and of human thought. If you wish Hispanic multiculturalism, let them read Cervantes. But let them not read mediocrity. Let them not read bad writing. Let them not read ill-thought matters, simply because they are written by contemporary members of a particular, as we call it, ethnic group.

Harold Bloom, from his appearance on Book TV, June 28, 2000