To have access to literature, world literature, was to escape…

To have access to literature, world literature, was to escape the prison of national vanity, of philistinism, of compulsory provincialism, of inane schooling, of imperfect destinies and bad luck. Literature was the passport to enter a larger life; that is, the zone of freedom.
Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.

Sourced, Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)

Other Susan Sontag Quotes

I’ll take the American empire any day over the empire of what my pal Chris Hitchens calls “Islamic fascism.” I’m not against fighting this enemy — it is an enemy and I’m not a pacifist.
I think what happened on Sept. 11 was an appalling crime, and I’m astonished that I even have to say that, to reassure people that I feel that way. But I do feel that the Gulf War revisited is not the way to fight this enemy. - View Quote Details on I’ll take the American empire any day over the empire…
I don’t want to express alienation. It isn’t what I feel. I’m interested in various kinds of passionate engagement. All my work says be serious, be passionate, wake up. - View Quote Details on I don’t want to express alienation. It isn’t what I…
All modern wars, even when their aims are the traditional ones, such as territorial aggrandizement or the acquisition of scarce resources, are cast as clashes of civilizations — culture wars — with each side claiming the high ground, and characterizing the other as barbaric. The enemy is invariably a threat to “our way of life,” an infidel, a desecrator, a polluter, a defiler of higher or better values. The current war against the very real threat posed by militant Islamic fundamentalism is a particularly clear example. - View Quote Details on All modern wars, even when their aims are the traditional…
I believe that courage is morally neutral. I can well imagine wicked people being brave and good people being timid or afraid. I don’t consider it a moral virtue. - View Quote Details on I believe that courage is morally neutral. I can well…
Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility. And the means for practicing art have been radically extended…. Painters no longer feel themselves confined to canvas and paint, but employ hair, photographs, wax, sand, bicycle tires, their own toothbrushes and socks. Musicians have reached beyond the sounds of the traditional instruments to use tampered instruments and (usually on tape) synthetic sounds and industrial noises. - View Quote Details on Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument…
The AIDS crisis is evidence of a world in which nothing important is regional, local, limited; in which everything that can circulate does, and every problem is, or is destined to become, worldwide. - View Quote Details on The AIDS crisis is evidence of a world in which…
From “old” Europe’s point of view, America seems bent on squandering the admiration — and gratitude — felt by most Europeans. The immense sympathy for the United States in the aftermath of the attack on September 11, 2001 was genuine. (I can testify to its resounding ardor and sincerity in Germany; I was in Berlin at the time.) But what has followed is an increasing estrangement on both sides. The citizens of the richest and most powerful nation in history have to know that America is loved, and envied… and resented. - View Quote Details on From “old” Europe’s point of view, America seems bent on…
Americans have it right. Europeans are not in an evangelical — or a bellicose — mood.
Indeed, sometimes I have to pinch myself to be sure I am not dreaming: that what many people in my own country now hold against Germany, which wreaked such horrors on the world for nearly a century — the new “German problem,” as it were — is that Germans are repelled by war; that much of German public opinion is now virtually… pacifist! - View Quote Details on Americans have it right. Europeans are not in an evangelical…
One of my oldest crusades is against the distinction between thought and feeling… which is really the basis of all anti-intellectual views: the heart and the head, thinking and feeling, fantasy and judgment. We have more or less the same bodies, but very different kinds of thoughts. I believe that we think much more with the instruments provided by our culture than we do with our bodies, and hence the much greater diversity of thought in the world. Thinking is a form of feeling; feeling is a form of thinking. - View Quote Details on One of my oldest crusades is against the distinction between…
In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art. - View Quote Details on In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of…