Susan Sontag citations

Source: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

Source: Illness as Metaphor

Source: At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches

"Against Interpretation" (1964), p. 8
Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)

Salon interview (2001)
Contexte: But just because I am a critic of Israeli policy — and in particular the occupation, simply because it is untenable, it creates a border that cannot be defended — that does not mean I believe the U. S. has brought this terrorism on itself because it supports Israel. I believe bin Laden and his supporters are using this as a pretext. If we were to change our support for Israel overnight, we would not stop these attacks.
I don't think this is what it's really about. I think it truly is a jihad, I think there is such a thing. There are many levels to Islamic rage. But what we're dealing with here is a view of the U. S. as a secular, sinful society that must be humbled, and this has nothing to do with any particular aspect of American policy. In my view, there can be no compromise with such a vision. And, no, I don't think we have brought this upon ourselves, which is of course a view that has been attributed to me.

Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
Contexte: A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not be corrupted — made cynical, superficial — by this understanding.

"The Imagination of Disaster" from Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966), p. 212
Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)

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

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

Source: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

Source: Regarding the Pain of Others

"Susan Sontag Finds Romance" http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/02/books/booksspecial/sontag-romance.html?ex=1168146000&en=d224e29f399a3317&ei=5070, interview with by Leslie Garis, The New York Times (2 August 1992)

Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)

"Unguided Tour", in The New Yorker (31 October 1977), final lines; also in I, Etcetera (1977)
Contexte: A curious word, wanderlust. I'm ready to go.
I've already gone. Regretfully, exultantly. A prouder lyricism. It's not Paradise that's lost.
Advice. Move along, let's get cracking, don’t hold me down, he travels fastest who travels alone. Let's get the show on the road. Get up, slugabed. I'm clearing out of here. Get your ass in gear. Sleep faster, we need the pillow.
She's racing, he's stalling.
If I go this fast, I won't see anything. If I slow down —
Everything. — then I won't have seen everything before it disappears.
Everywhere. I've been everywhere. I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.
Land's end. But there's water, O my heart. And salt on my tongue.
The end of the world. This is not the end of the world.

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

Source: Regarding the Pain of Others

Variante: 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.
Source: On Photography

Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
Contexte: Literature is dialogue; responsiveness. Literature might be described as the history of human responsiveness to what is alive and what is moribund as cultures evolve and interact with one another.
Writers can do something to combat these clichés of our separateness, our difference — for writers are makers, not just transmitters, of myths. Literature offers not only myths but counter-myths, just as life offers counter-experiences — experiences that confound what you thought you thought, or felt, or believed.

"Susan Sontag Finds Romance," interview by Leslie Garis, The New York Times (2 August 1992)
Contexte: To me, literature is a calling, even a kind of salvation. It connects me with an enterprise that is over 2,000 years old. What do we have from the past? Art and thought. That's what lasts. That's what continues to feed people and give them an idea of something better. A better state of one's feelings or simply the idea of a silence in one's self that allows one to think or to feel. Which to me is the same.

"The Risk Taker" http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,,635799,00.html, profile/interview by Gary Younge, The Guardian (19 January 2002)
Contexte: I guess I think I'm writing for people who are smarter than I am, because then I'll be doing something that's worth their time. I'd be very afraid to write from a position where I consciously thought I was smarter than most of my readers.

Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
Contexte: All modern wars, even when their aims are the traditional ones, such as territorial aggrandizement or the acquisition of scarce resources, are cast as clashes of civilizations — culture wars — with each side claiming the high ground, and characterizing the other as barbaric. The enemy is invariably a threat to "our way of life," an infidel, a desecrator, a polluter, a defiler of higher or better values. The current war against the very real threat posed by militant Islamic fundamentalism is a particularly clear example.

Source: Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966), p. 6
Contexte: Interpretation is not (as most people assume) an absolute value, a gesture of mind situated in some timeless realm of capabilities. Interpretation must itself be evaluated, within a historical view of human consciousness. In some cultural contexts, interpretation is a liberating act. It is a means of revising, of transvaluing, of escaping the dead past. In other cultural contexts, it is reactionary, impertinent, cowardly, stifling.