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Susan Sontag Quotes - Page 14

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

Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptable for one's private, secret thoughts - like a confidante who is deaf, dumb, and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could

Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptable for one's private, secret thoughts - like a confidante who is deaf, dumb, and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself. ... The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather - in many cases - offers an alternative to it.

Independent, Dumb, Secret

People don't become inured to what they are shown - if that's the right way to describe what happens - because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling. The states described as apathy, moral or emotional anesthesia, are full of feelings; the feelings are rage and frustration.

Frustration, Emotional, People

Susan Sontag (2013). “Regarding the Pain of Others”, p.102, Macmillan

Instead of expecting all and being lowered into despair each time I get less, I expect nothing now and, occasionally, I get a little, and am more than a little happy.

Despair, Littles, Expect Nothing

Susan Sontag (2009). “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963”, p.189, Macmillan

Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism -- victimless collecting, as it were... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.

Becoming One, Ironic, World

On Photography "Melancholy Objects" (1977)

I love to read the way people love to watch television.

People, Watches, Television

Susan Sontag, Jonathan Cott (2013). “Susan Sontag: The Complete Rolling Stone Interview”, p.33, Yale University Press

The only transformation that interests me is a total transformation - however minute

Transformation, Minutes, Interest

Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.102, Macmillan

The becoming of man is the history of the exhaustion of his possibilities.

Men, History, Becoming

The single most amazing phenomenon is the discrediting of idealism.

Most Amazing, Idealism, Phenomenon

Everything has changed and nothing is changed.

Changed, Things Have Changed

Susan Sontag (1992). “The Volcano Lover”

Surrealism is a bourgeois disaffection; that its militants thought it universal is only one of the signs that it is typically bourgeois.

Surrealism, Universal, Bourgeois

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.49, Macmillan

Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.

Women, Important, Disease

Susan Sontag (1979). “Illness as metaphor”, Vintage

You have to sink way down to a level of hopelessness and desperation to find the book that you can write.

Book, Writing, Levels

In the final analysis, style is art. And art is nothing more or less than various modes of stylized, dehumanized representation.

Art, Style, Finals

Susan Sontag (1983). “A Susan Sontag reader”, Vintage

All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no.

Understanding, Possibility, Ability

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.24, Macmillan

Creativity needs to be taken care of. It's like a big baby that needs to be nourished.

Baby, Taken, Creativity

There are more and more taboos about calling something, anything, ugly.

Calling, Ugly, Taboo

Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.24, Macmillan

Is it the obligation of great art to be continually interesting? I think not.

Art, Thinking, Interesting

Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead.

Inspiration, Kissing, Waiting

I perceive value, I confer value, I create value, I even create — or guarantee — existence. Hence, my compulsion to make “lists.” The things (Beethoven’s music, movies, business firms) won’t exist unless I signify my interest in them by at least noting down their names. Nothing exists unless I maintain it (by my interest, or my potential interest). This is an ultimate, mostly subliminal anxiety. Hence, I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province.

Names, Anxiety, Principles

Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.251, Macmillan

Nature in America has always been suspect, on the defensive, cannibalized by progress. In America, every specimen becomes a relic.

Nature, America, Progress

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.59, Macmillan

Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them.

Healthy, Alive, Becoming

Susan Sontag (1983). “A Susan Sontag reader”, Vintage

Taste has no system and no proofs.

Taste, Proof

Susan Sontag (2014). “A Susan Sontag Reader”, p.160, Macmillan

Our very sense of situation is now articulated by the camera's interventions. The omnipresence of cameras persuasively suggests that time consists of interesting events, events worth photographing. This, in turn, makes it easy to feel that any event, once underway, and whatever its moral character, should be allowed to complete itself - so that something else can be brought into the world, the photograph.

Character, Interesting, Cameras

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.12, Macmillan

The "happening" operates by creating an asymmetrical network of surprises, without climax or consummation, this is the alogism of dreams rather than the logic of most art.

Dream, Art, Creating

Chris Marker has a brilliant mind and heart and appetite for life, and it's a privilege to travel with him to whatever he chooses to remember and to evoke. He is one of cinema's all time greats - the most important reflective or non-narrative filmmaker after Dziga Vertov.

Heart, Appetite For Life, Mind

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