Susan Sontag Quotes

Quotes about:

• All understanding begins with our not accepting the world as it appears.

  Susan Sontag

  Understanding, World, Accepting

  44 Copy quote

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

  Susan Sontag

  Museums, Encounters, World

  Source: ctheory.net

  7 Copy quote

• A work of art, so far as it is a work of art, cannot - whatever the artist's personal intention - advocate anything at all.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Propaganda, Intention

  4 Copy quote

• A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility what human nature is of what happens in the world. It's a creator of inwardness.

  Susan Sontag

  Education, Book, Heart

  8 Copy quote

• The really important thing is not to reject anything.

  Susan Sontag

  Important, Rejects, Important Things

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

  5 Copy quote

• Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.

  Susan Sontag

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Kissing

  67 Copy quote
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  To take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt.

  Susan Sontag

  Time, Moments, Photograph

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

  63 Copy quote
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  It is easier to endure than to change. But once one has changed, what was endured is hard to recall.

  Susan Sontag

  Easier, Endure, Changed

  Susan Sontag (2014). “A Susan Sontag Reader”, p.25, Macmillan

  60 Copy quote

• The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.

  Susan Sontag

  Women, Reality, People

  New York Review of Books 18 Apr. 1974

  26 Copy quote

• In the valley of sorrow, spread your wings.

  Susan Sontag

  Sadness, Wings, Sorrow

  43 Copy quote

• Few ever see what is not already inside their heads.

  Susan Sontag

  Susan Sontag (1992). “The Volcano Lover”

  6 Copy quote
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  What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.

  Susan Sontag

  Beauty, Beautiful, Women

  Susan Sontag (2014). “A Susan Sontag Reader”, p.164, Macmillan

  78 Copy quote

• The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes.

  Susan Sontag

  Wish, Becoming, Recognition

  Susan Sontag (2008). “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963”, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  25 Copy quote

• What makes me feel strong? Being in love and work. I must work.

  Susan Sontag

  Strong, Being In Love, Feels

  Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.356, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.

  Susan Sontag

  Inspirational, Life, Encouraging

  Susan Sontag (2017). “Stories: Collected Stories”, p.114, Penguin UK

  79 Copy quote

• The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone — its ideologies and inventions — which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself.

  Susan Sontag

  Cancer, Civilization, White

  'Partisan Review' Winter 1967, p. 57

  11 Copy quote

• 10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.

  Susan Sontag

  Population, Matter, Moved

  34 Copy quote

• The wisdom of literature is quite antithetical to having opinions. 'Nothing is my last word about anything,' said Henry James. Furnishing opinions, even correct opinions - whenever asked - cheapens what novelists and poets do best, which is to sponsor reflectiveness, to pursue complexity. Information will never replace illumination.

  Susan Sontag

  Illumination, Novelists, Literature

  Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.154, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• ...to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude.

  Susan Sontag

  Photography, Photograph

  Susan Sontag (2013). “Regarding the Pain of Others”, p.46, Macmillan

  52 Copy quote

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

  Susan Sontag

  Notebook, Writing, Letters

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

  14 Copy quote

• The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.

  Susan Sontag

  Photography, Pain, Photographer

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

  19 Copy quote

• Intelligence is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.

  Susan Sontag

  Intelligent, Ideas, Intelligence

  31 Copy quote

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

  Susan Sontag

  Vitality, Attention, Eagerness

  15 Copy quote

• The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.

  Susan Sontag

  History, Interesting, Answers

  20 Copy quote

• It's not 'natural' to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting, articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little - have few verbal means. Eloquence - thinking in words - is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups, it's more natural to sing, to dance, to pray: given, rather than invented (individual) speech.

  Susan Sontag

  Mean, Thinking, Interesting

  Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Diaries 1964-1980”, p.351, Penguin UK

  14 Copy quote

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