Someone on dKos linked to this Susan Sontag speech and I just had to quote this one bit:

"Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.

Kind of a standard sentiment, but well put and worth repeating. The whole thing is rather good, about the divide (continuing, not just recent) between America and Europe. I'd never really known much about her, but since her death I've heard and read a lot, and she seems damn smart.