رمانی ارزش خواندن دارد که قلب را تعلیم دهد، احساس شما را از امکانات بشری بسط دهد، از آنچه که سرنوشت انسان است و آنچه در جهان رخ می‌دهد. ادبیات در قال… - Susan Sontag

Being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country is a quintessential modern experience.

It is a view of suffering, of the pain of others, that is rooted in religious thinking, which links pain to sacrifice, sacrifice to exaltation - a view that could not be more alien to a modern sensibility, which regards suffering as something that is a mistake or an accident or a crime. Something to be fixed. Something to be refused. Something that makes one feel powerless.

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.