Authors:

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

Susan Sontag Quotes

All Quotes Age Aids Anxiety Art Awareness Beauty Cancer Change Character Comedy Communism Community Consciousness Country Criticism Culture Death Desire Destiny Detachment Dying Energy Evidence Exercise Failing Feelings Funny Giving Health Heart History Identity Illness Imagination Inspiration Inspirational Journey Joy Judgment Language Life Literature Love Lust Lying Memories Metaphor Morality Nature Pain Painting Passion Past Perfection Photography Pleasure Pollution Purpose Quality Reading Reality Revenge Risk Sexuality Silence Style Suffering Surrealism Today Tradition Tragedy Transformation Travel Understanding Values Violence Waiting War Writing

All understanding begins with our not accepting the world as it appears.

All understanding begins with our not accepting the world as it appears.

Understanding, World, Accepting

Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.

Inspirational, Inspiring, Kissing

To take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt.

Time, Moments, Photograph

Susan Sontag (1978). “On photography”, Delta

It is easier to endure than to change. But once one has changed, what was endured is hard to recall.

Easier, Endure, Changed

Susan Sontag (2014). “A Susan Sontag Reader”, p.25, Macmillan

The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes.

Wish, Becoming, Recognition

Susan Sontag (2008). “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963”, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Few ever see what is not already inside their heads.

Susan Sontag (1992). “The Volcano Lover”

What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.

Beauty, Beautiful, Women

Susan Sontag (2014). “A Susan Sontag Reader”, p.164, Macmillan

In the valley of sorrow, spread your wings.

Sadness, Wings, Sorrow

Whoever invented marriage was an ingenious tormentor. It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings. The whole point of marriage is repetition. The best it aims for is the creation of strong, mutual dependencies.

Strong, Feelings, Creation

Susan Sontag (2009). “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963”, p.83, Macmillan

The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.

Women, Reality, People

New York Review of Books 18 Apr. 1974

I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.

Inspirational, Life, Encouraging

Susan Sontag (2017). “Stories: Collected Stories”, p.114, Penguin UK

The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone — its ideologies and inventions — which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself.

Cancer, Civilization, White

'Partisan Review' Winter 1967, p. 57

...to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude.

Photography, Photograph

Susan Sontag (2013). “Regarding the Pain of Others”, p.46, Macmillan

The wisdom of literature is quite antithetical to having opinions. 'Nothing is my last word about anything,' said Henry James. Furnishing opinions, even correct opinions - whenever asked - cheapens what novelists and poets do best, which is to sponsor reflectiveness, to pursue complexity. Information will never replace illumination.

Illumination, Novelists, Literature

Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.154, Macmillan

Intelligence is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.

Intelligent, Ideas, Intelligence

I'm only interested in people engaged in a project of self-transformation.

Self, People, Transformation

Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.357, Macmillan

To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have.

People, Photograph, Subliminal

Ideas disturb the levelness of life

Ideas

Susan Sontag (2009). “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963”, p.3, Macmillan

Time exists in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once…and space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you.

Order, Space, Happens

Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.214, Macmillan

Being in love means being willing to ruin yourself for the other person.

Mean, Being In Love, Ruins

Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.266, Macmillan

The young-old polarization and the male-female polarization are perhaps the two leading stereotypes that imprison people.

Two, People, Males

10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.

Population, Matter, Moved

It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.

Hurt, Knowing, Giving

Susan Sontag (2009). “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963”, p.264, Macmillan

We live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large rations by the popular arts, which allows most people to cope with these twin specters.

Art, Writing, Destiny

It's not 'natural' to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting, articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little - have few verbal means. Eloquence - thinking in words - is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups, it's more natural to sing, to dance, to pray: given, rather than invented (individual) speech.

Mean, Thinking, Interesting

Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Diaries 1964-1980”, p.351, Penguin UK

1
2
3
4
Next

You May Also Like: