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Susan Sontag Quotes - Page 2

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

Wherever people feel safe — they will be indifferent.

Wherever people feel safe — they will be indifferent.

People, Safe, Indifferent

"Regarding the Pain of Others".

The really important thing is not to reject anything.

Important, Rejects, Important Things

Susan Sontag (2009). “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963”, p.33, Macmillan

the appetite for thinking must be regulated, as all sensible people know, for it may stifle one's life.

Thinking, People, May

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

Decline of the letter, the rise of the notebook! One doesn't write to others any more; one writes to oneself.

Notebook, Writing, Letters

Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.511, Macmillan

Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life - its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness - conjoin to dull our sensory faculties

Loss, Culture, Modern Life

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

The writer's first job is not to have opinions but to tell the truth... and refuse to be an accomplice of lies and misinformation. Literature is the house of nuance and contrariness against the voices of simplification.

Jobs, Lying, Voice

Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.193, Macmillan

The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.

History, Interesting, Answers

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; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.

Gun, People, Cameras

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.16, Macmillan

Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution. Poignant longings for beauty, for an end to probing below the surface, for a redemption and celebration of the body of the world. Ultimately, having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it.

Beauty, Women, Citizens

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

One doesn't need to know the artist's private intentions. The work tells all.

Artist, Needs, Intention

Susan Sontag (2014). “A Susan Sontag Reader”, p.167, Macmillan

The quote is always fascinating because it changes out of context, becomes different and sometimes more mysterious. It has a directness and assertiveness it may not have had in the original. I think the quality of inaccessibility, the mystery, is important - that whatever matters can't be taken in on just one reading or one seeing. This is certainly a quality of the little of art that lasts.

Art, Taken, Reading

Source: ctheory.net

Art is a form of consciousness.

Art, Consciousness, Form

Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.42, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

To me, literature is a calling, even a kind of salvation. It connects me with an enterprise that is over 2,000 years old. What do we have from the past? Art and thought. That’s what lasts. That’s what continues to feed people and give them an idea of something better.

Art, Past, Years

"Susan Sontag Finds Romance". Interview with Leslie Garis, www.nytimes.com. August 2, 1992.

Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.

Vitality, Attention, Eagerness

The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.

Photography, Pain, Photographer

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.82, Macmillan

Time eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art.

Art, Levels, Photograph

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.22, Macmillan

The only interesting ideas are heresies

Ideas, Interesting, Heresy

Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.440, Macmillan

All my life I've been looking for someone intelligent to talk to.

Intelligent, Conversation

A good listener: a physical presence that is warm, alert, intelligent - more important than any words.

Intelligent, Listening, Important

Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.382, Macmillan

Literature can train, and exercise, our ability to weep for those who are not us or ours.

Exercise, Literature, Ability

Susan Sontag, Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (2003). “Susan Sontag: Ansprachen aus Anlass der Verleihung”

I urge you to be as impudent as you dare. BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BE BOLD.

Courage, Health, Inspire

Never worry about being obsessive. I like obsessive people. Obsessive people make great art

Art, People, Worry

What we need is to use what we have.

Use It Or Lose It, Needs, Use

Read a lot. Expect something big, something exalting or deepening from a book. No book is worth reading that isn't worth re-reading.

Book, Reading, Bigs

Life is a movie; death is a photograph.

Life Is, Photograph

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