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 - Page 21

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

It is not altogether wrong to say that there is no such thing as a bad photograph - only less interesting, less relevant, less mysterious ones.

It is not altogether wrong to say that there is no such thing as a bad photograph - only less interesting, less relevant, less mysterious ones.

Photography, Interesting, Mysterious

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.124, Macmillan

Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future.

Past, Flux, Existence

Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.

Change, Nature, Swag

A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence. Like a wood fire in a room, photographs-especially those of people, of distant landscapes and faraway cities, of the vanished past-are incitements to reverie. The sense of the unattainable that can be evoked by photographs feeds directly into the erotic feelings of those for whom desirability is enhanced by distance.

Distance, Past, Fire

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.17, Macmillan

My ignorance is not charming.

Ignorance, Charming

The feminist movement has been important to me because it's made me feel less odd and also because it has made me understand some of the pressures on women which I was lucky enough to have escaped, perhaps because of my eccentricity or the oddness of my upbringing.

Feminist, Important, Lucky

Source: ctheory.net

I certainly identify myself as a feminist.

Feminist

Source: ctheory.net

Now the new things happening in France don't interest me.

France, Interest, Happenings

Source: ctheory.net

I feel that I've had enough theoretical speculation to last me a lifetime.

Lasts, Had Enough, Lifetime

Source: ctheory.net

You know that you can't make references to the Classics any longer and less and less to the English classics even.

Knows

Source: ctheory.net

I'm interested in the possibility of fiction which straddles narrative and essay.

Fiction, Narrative, Possibility

Source: ctheory.net

I didn't think of myself as importing, I thought it was more interesting to write about things people didn't know about than what they did. When I became aware that I was in fact "importing", I stopped doing it.

Writing, Thinking, People

Source: ctheory.net

You can always be quoted.

Source: ctheory.net

There is an understandable vindictiveness in people who come from Communist countries. They want to keep telling us that we were fools to think that we could make radical changes in our society. Though I understand their dismay, respect their suffering and don't understand the gullibility of some people who don't take in how repressive these societies are, I still think it's important to keep people of all kinds as active in civic matters as possible.

Country, Thinking, People

Source: ctheory.net

In a lot of writing or intellectual discourse we're starting to use that model: "Oh, this is where it comes from!" I would like to concentrate on work which is more resistant to that procedure, as I think fiction is.

Writing, Thinking, Intellectual

Source: ctheory.net

Currently intellectuals in Western Europe and North America are extremely demoralized and shaken by the rise of a virulent conservative tendency (which some have even joined).

Europe, America, Conservative

Source: ctheory.net

When you are writing, you are - from society's point of view - only producing the first version which will then be processed and recycled.

Writing, Views, Firsts

Source: ctheory.net

The writers or artists I write about are not necessarily those I care most about (Shakespeare is still my favourite writer) but those whose work I feel has been neglected.

Writing, Artist, Care

Source: ctheory.net

When you see your 40-page essay turned into a "hot tip" in one paragraph in Newsweek, you get anxious about the way your writing has been used.

Writing, Hot, Pages

Source: ctheory.net

It's not that you make up your ideas to justify your temperament but that it's the temperament first.

Ideas, Firsts, Justify

Source: ctheory.net

Ultimately ideas come out of a temperament or a sensibility, they are a crystallization or a precipitation of temperament.

Ideas, Temperament, Sensibility

Source: ctheory.net

I think part of the success which Structuralist or post-Structuralist thought in critical theory has had in literary studies in American universities is due to a theoretical vacuum.

Thinking, Vacuums, American Universities

Source: ctheory.net

I'm extremely interested in the Russian formalists and have been for many years. I'm more drawn to their writing, which is expressive and literary, than to writing which is extremely academic or jargon-ridden.

Writing, Years, Jargon

Source: ctheory.net

Using quotations was at first quite spontaneous for me, but then this use became strengthened through reflection. But originally this practice came out of temperament.

Reflection, Practice, Use

Source: ctheory.net

The question of the social uses of photography opens out into the very largest issues of the self, of the relationship to community, to reality.

Photography, Reality, Self

Source: ctheory.net

You May Also Like: