writers are makers, not just transmitters, of myths. Literature offers not only myths but counter-myths, just as life offers counter-experiences - experiences that confound what you thought you thought, or felt, or believed.
Susan SontagAl forms of consensus about ''great'' books and ''perennial'' problems, once stabilized, tend to deteriorate eventually into something philistine. The real life of the mind is always at the frontiers of ''what is already known.'' Those great books don't only need custodians and transmitters. To stay alive, they also need adversaries. The most interesting ideas are heresies.
Susan SontagIn America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it.
Susan SontagAIDS obliges people to think of sex as having, possibly, the direst consequences: suicide. Or murder.
Susan Sontag