Susan Sontag Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Susan Sontag

  Susan Sontag (1992). “The Volcano Lover”

  5 Copy quote

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

  Susan Sontag

  Understanding, World, Accepting

  43 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

  64 Copy quote

• In the greatest art, one is always aware of things that cannot be said. . .of the contradiction between expression and the presence of the inexpressible. Stylistic devices are also techniques of avoidance. The most potent elements of a work of art are, often, its silences.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Expression, Silence

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

  5 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

• 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
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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

  58 Copy quote

• Time exists in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once…and space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you.

  Susan Sontag

  Order, Space, Happens

  Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.214, Macmillan

  14 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

  77 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

  78 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

• In the valley of sorrow, spread your wings.

  Susan Sontag

  Sadness, Wings, Sorrow

  43 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

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

  Susan Sontag

  Intelligent, Listening, Important

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

  7 Copy quote

• We live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large rations by the popular arts, which allows most people to cope with these twin specters.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Writing, Destiny

  72 Copy quote

• The young-old polarization and the male-female polarization are perhaps the two leading stereotypes that imprison people.

  Susan Sontag

  Two, People, Males

  11 Copy quote

• The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.

  Susan Sontag

  Photography, Pain, Photographer

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

  19 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

• Marriage is a sort of tacit hunting in couples. The world all in couples, each couple in its own little house, watching its own little interests and stewing in its own little privacy - it's the most repulsive thing in the world. One's got to get rid of the exclusiveness of married love.

  Susan Sontag

  Love, Couple, Hunting

  Susan Sontag (2009). “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963”, p.190, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

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

  Susan Sontag

  Intelligent, Ideas, Intelligence

  30 Copy quote

• Being in love means being willing to ruin yourself for the other person.

  Susan Sontag

  Mean, Being In Love, Ruins

  Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.266, Macmillan

  21 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

• The truth is balance. However the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.

  Susan Sontag

  Truth, Lying, Opposites

  9 Copy quote

• I'm only interested in people engaged in a project of self-transformation.

  Susan Sontag

  Self, People, Transformation

  Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.357, Macmillan

  38 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

  33 Copy quote

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