That's what a community is: taking for granted certain assumptions, not having to start from zero every time. This is no longer true.
Susan SontagFatal illness has always been viewed as a test of moral character, but in the nineteenth century there is a great reluctance to let anybody flunk the test.
Susan SontagAlthough photography generates works that can be called art-it requires subjectivity, it can lie, it gives aesthetic pleasure-photography is not, to begin with, an art form at all. Like language, it is a medium in which works of art (among other things) are made.
Susan SontagWhen you are writing, you are - from society's point of view - only producing the first version which will then be processed and recycled.
Susan SontagThe ratio of authentic literature to trash in pornography may be somewhat lower than the ratio of novels of genuine literary meritto the entire volume of sub-literary fiction produced for mass taste. But it is probably not lower than, for instance, that of another somewhat shady sub-genre with a few first-rate books to its credit, science fiction.
Susan Sontag