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Susan Sontag Quotes - Page 7

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

What, I ask, drives me to disorder? How can I diagnose myself? All I feel, most immediately, is the most anguished need for physical love and mental companionship -

What, I ask, drives me to disorder? How can I diagnose myself? All I feel, most immediately, is the most anguished need for physical love and mental companionship -

Needs, Companionship, Disorder

Susan Sontag (2009). “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963”, p.11, Macmillan

A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of "spirit" over matter.

History, Psychology, Matter

"Illness As Metaphor" by Susan Sontag, ch. 7 (pp. 55-56), 1978.

The most potent elements in a work of art are, often, its silences.

Art, Silence, Elements

Susan Sontag (2014). “A Susan Sontag Reader”, p.230, Macmillan

Mad people = People who stand alone and burn. I'm attracted to them because they give me permission to do the same.

People, Giving, Mad

Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.194, Macmillan

Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.

Art, Science, Fiction

"Against Interpretation and Other Essays" by Susan Sontag, (p. 212), 1966.

In America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it.

Photography, Past, America

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.61, Macmillan

Bleak factory buildings and billboard-cluttered avenues look as beautiful, through the camera's eye, as churches and pastoral landscapes.

Beauty, Beautiful, Eye

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.72, Macmillan

Writing is a little door. Some fantasies, like big pieces of furniture, won’t come through.

Writing, Doors, Pieces

Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.45, Macmillan

But when we are nostalgic, we take pictures

Nostalgic

1974 In the New York Review of Books,18 Apr.

Perversity is the muse of modern literature.

Literature, Muse, Modern

1966 Against Interpretation,'Camus' Notebooks'.

A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing.

Said

A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened. The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what’s in the picture

May, Photograph, Proof

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.7, Macmillan

To collect photographs is to collect the world.

Photography, World, Photograph

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.5, Macmillan

Nothing is mysterious, no human relation. Except love.

Love, Mysterious, Relation

Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.128, Macmillan

God, living is enormous!

Enormous

Susan Sontag (2009). “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963”, p.30, Macmillan

Music is at once the most wonderful, the most alive of all the arts- it is the most abstract, the most perfect, the most pure- and the most sensual. I listen with my body and it is my body that aches in response to the passion and pathos embodied in this music.

Art, Passion, Perfect

Susan Sontag (2009). “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963”, p.10, Macmillan

Talking like touching. Writing like punching somebody.

Writing, Talking, Touching

To emphasize style is to slight content, or to introduce an attitude which is neutral with respect to content.

Attitude, Style, Introducing

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

The ideology of capitalism makes us all into connoisseurs of liberty - of the indefinite expansion of possibility.

Liberty, Expansion, Possibility

Susan Sontag (2013). “Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors”, p.118, Penguin UK

It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades.

Aggravation, World Suffering, Suffering

"AIDS and Its Metaphors" by Susan Sontagm, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ch. 4, (p. 125), 1989.

A family's photograph album is generally about the extended family and, often, is all that remains of it.

Photography, Cousin, Often Is

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.10, Macmillan

Communism is fascism with a human face.

Faces, Communism, Fascism

To photograph is to confer importance.

Photography, Photograph, Importance

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.27, Macmillan

As objects of contemplation, images of the atrocious can answer to several different needs. To steel oneself against weakness. To make oneself more numb. To acknowledge the existence of the incorrigible.

Weakness, Different, Needs

Susan Sontag (2013). “Regarding the Pain of Others”, p.98, Macmillan

We live in a world of copies and we're fascinated when we encounter the originals (in a museum, for instance).

Museums, Encounters, World

Source: ctheory.net

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