Susan Sontag was born today in 1933.
INTERVIEWER
Is it old-fashioned to think that the purpose of literature is to educate us about life?
SONTAG
Well, it does educate us about life. I wouldn’t be the person I am, I wouldn’t understand what I understand, were it not for certain books. I’m thinking of the great question of nineteenth-century Russian literature: how should one live? A novel worth reading is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility, of what human nature is, of what happens in the world. It’s a creator of inwardness.
—Susan Sontag, the Art of Fiction No. 143
I agree, and I recognize that I need to read more ... once I start teaching, I don't have time to read! That's what breaks are for :P. About to start, "The Color Purple"!
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