"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."

                           Susan Sontag

                        Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)