“Let the atrocious images haunt us.… This is what human beings are capable of doing—may volunteer to do, enthusiastically, self-righteously. Don’t forget.”

“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.”

“There is such a thing as thoroughly undeserved catastrophe… one shouldn’t try to make sense out of one’s catastrophe by coming to feel guilty and feel therefore that you merited this terrible thing that happened to you. Or allow other people to impose that kind of judgement.” – Sontag interviewed by Michael Ignatieff for the…