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Susan Sontag Quotes - Page 8

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

One criticizes in others what one recognizes and despises in oneself. For example, an artist who is revolted by another’s ambitiousness.

One criticizes in others what one recognizes and despises in oneself. For example, an artist who is revolted by another’s ambitiousness.

Artist, Example, Despise

Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.64, Macmillan

With more people, there are more voices to tune out.

Voice, People, Tunes

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

We are told we must choose - the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is a life if not a series of negotiations between the old and the new?

Choices, Understanding, Facts

Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.259, Macmillan

The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.

Creativity, Men, Boredom

Photography is, first of all, a way of seeing.

Photography, Way, Firsts

Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.162, Macmillan

The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.

Writing, Would Be, Truth Is

Christine Allison, Susan Sontag (1978). “The benefactor: a novel”, Delta

Art is not consciousness per se, but rather its antidote- evolved from within consciousness itself.

Art, Consciousness, Art Is

Susan Sontag (2014). “A Susan Sontag Reader”, p.262, Macmillan

Fatal illness has always been viewed as a test of moral character, but in the nineteenth century there is a great reluctance to let anybody flunk the test.

Character, Tests, Moral

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

Images have been reproached for being a way of watching suffering at a distance, as if there were some other way of watching.

Distance, Suffering, Way

Susan Sontag (2013). “Regarding the Pain of Others”, p.117, Macmillan

Depression is melancholy minus its charms - the animation, the fits.

Depression, Fit, Melancholy

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

Etymologically, 'patient' means sufferer.

Mean, Patient, Sufferers

The work of art itself is . . . a vibrant, magical, and exemplary object which returns us to the world in some way more open and enriched.

Art, World, Way

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

I discovered that I am tired of being a person. Not just tired of being the person I was, but any person at all

Tired, Persons

Susan Sontag (2017). “Stories: Collected Stories”, p.99, Penguin UK

A good book is an education of the heart.

Book, Heart, Good Book

When we're afraid we shoot. But when we're nostalgic we take pictures.

Nostalgic

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

The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community.

Inspirational, Change, Community

Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.243, Macmillan

All great art contains at its center contemplation, a dynamic contemplation.

Art, Contemplation, Great Art

Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.50, Macmillan

So successful has been the camera's role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful.

Beautiful, Photography, Successful

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.76, Macmillan

Photographs objectify: they turn an event or a person into something that can be possessed.

Photography, Events, Turns

Susan Sontag (2013). “Regarding the Pain of Others”, p.81, Macmillan

Dissimulation, secretiveness, appear a necessity to the melancholic. He has complex, often veiled relations with others. These feelings of superiority, of inadequacy, of baffled feeling, of not being able to get what one wants, or even name it properly (or consistently) to oneself — these can be, it is felt they ought to be, masked by friendliness, or the most scrupulous manipulation.

Names, Feelings, Want

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, Cameras, Murder

"On Photography". Book by Susan Sontag, www.elle.com. 1977.

Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.

Dream, Reading, Writing

There is a great deal that either has to be given up or be taken away from you if you are going to succeed in writing a body of work.

Taken, Writing, Body

Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.547, Macmillan

In good films, there is always a directness that entirely frees us from the itch to interpret.

Film, Good Films

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

I write in spurts. I write when I have to because the pressure builds up and I feel enough confidence that something has matured in my head and I can write it down. But once something is really under way, I don't want to do anything else. I don't go out, much of the time I forget to eat, I sleep very little. It's a very undisciplined way of working and makes me not very prolific. But I'm too interested in many other things.

Writing, Sleep, Want

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