Susan Sontag Quotes (168 quotes, page 2)

Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
Context: To have access to literature, world literature, was to escape the prison of national vanity, of philistinism, of compulsory provincialism, of inane schooling, of imperfect destinies and bad luck. Literature was the passport to enter a larger life; that is, the zone of freedom.
Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.

“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”

Susan Sontag

Source: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

“There is simply too much injustice in the world. And too much remembering (of ancient grievances: Serbs, Irish) embitters. To make peace is to forget. To reconcile, it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited.”

Susan Sontag Regarding the Pain of Others

Source: Regarding the Pain of Others

“All struggle, all resistance is -- must be -- concrete. And all struggle has a global resonance. If not here, then there. If not now, then soon. Elsewhere as well as here.”

Susan Sontag

Source: At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches

“Life is not about significant details, illuminated a flash, fixed forever.

Photographs are.”

Susan Sontag book On Photography

Source: On Photography

“Can I love someone… and still think/fly? Love is flying, sown, floating. Thought is solitary flight, beating wings.”

Susan Sontag

Source: As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

“Most of my reading is rereading.”

Susan Sontag

Source: Conversations with Susan Sontag

“Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to them for blowing their mind.”

Susan Sontag book Styles of Radical Will

Source: Styles of Radical Will

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

Susan Sontag

Source: As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

“She felt herself needing more and more sleep. When she awoke in the morning, she thought of when she might lie down again - and when she would sleep. She started going to the movies.”

Susan Sontag

Source: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

“My urge to write is an urge not to self-expressionism but to self-transcendence. My work is both bigger and smaller than I am.”

Susan Sontag

“Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead.”

Susan Sontag

“Desire has no history…”

Susan Sontag book On Photography

Source: On Photography

“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?”

Susan Sontag

Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
Context: 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? It seems to me that one should always be seeking to talk oneself out of these stark oppositions.

“Time eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art.”

Susan Sontag

“Elites presuppose masses.”

Susan Sontag book Styles of Radical Will

Styles of Radical Will

“Styles change, style doesn't.”

Susan Sontag

Styles, like everything else, change. Style doesn't. - Linda Ellerbee, Move On: Adventures in the Real World (1991), p. 35 G.P. Putnam's Sons ISBN 0399136231
Misattributed

“What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.”

Susan Sontag

"Notes on 'Camp'" (1964), note 9, p. 279 http://books.google.com/books?id=e3qgRrVlEH4C&q=%22What+is+most+beautiful+in+virile+men+is+something+feminine+what+is+most+beautiful+in+feminine+women+is+something+masculine%22&pg=PA279#v=onepage; originally published in Partisan Review, Vol. 31 No. 4 http://books.google.com/books?id=qEwqAQAAMAAJ&q=%22What+is+most+beautiful+in+virile+men+is+something+feminine+what+is+most+beautiful+in+feminine+women+is+something+masculine%22&pg=PA519#v=onepage, ( Fall 1964 http://www.bu.edu/partisanreview/books/PR1964V31N4/HTML/#519/z) <br class="br">Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)

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

Susan Sontag book AIDS and Its Metaphors

AIDS and Its Metaphors, (1989), ch. 4, p. 125, Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0-312-42013-7
AIDS and Its Metaphors was later published in combination with Illness As Metaphor. This combined edition is the one referenced here.

“Soldiers now pose, thumbs up, before the atrocities they commit, and send off the pictures to their buddies and family. What is revealed by these photographs is as much the culture of shamelessness as the reigning admiration for unapologetic brutality. Ours is a society in which secrets of private life that, formerly, you would have given nearly anything to conceal, you now clamor to get on a television show to reveal.”

Susan Sontag

Regarding the Torture of Others (2004)

“The expression of satisfaction at the acts of torture one is inflicting on helpless, trussed, naked victims is only part of the story. There is the primal satisfaction of being photographed, to which one is more inclined to respond not with a stiff, direct gaze (as in former times) but with glee. The events are in part designed to be photographed. The grin is a grin for the camera. There would be something missing if, after stacking the naked men, you couldn't take a picture of them.”

Susan Sontag

Regarding the Torture of Others (2004)