“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

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "My urge to write is an urge not to self-expressionism but to self-transcendence. My work is both bigger and smaller tha…" by Susan Sontag?

Susan Sontag 168

American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist 1933–2004

Related quotes

“The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 59
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice
Context: The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They ask to be deceived. What Stresemann said of the Germans is true of the frustrated in general: "[They] pray not only for [their] daily bread, but also for [their] daily illusion." The rule seems to be that those who find difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led.

“Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction.”

Greg Bear book The Forge of God

Source: The Forge of God (1987), Chapter 52 (p. 352)

“There was something about the self-confession and self-confusion of Abstract expressionism – as though the man and the work were the same – that personally always put me off because at that time my focus was in the opposite direction.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Source: 21st Century, Robert Rauschenberg, Works, Writings and Interviews, 2006, p. 37

“I wanted to wipe the grin off his face with a fist. I resisted the urge. Who says I have no self-control?”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

“I am not my self, I am the result of all my ancestors.”

Santiago Martínez Delgado (1906–1954) Colombian Muralist, Painter and Illstrator

"Leonor Concha SMD Collection" Santiago Martínez Delgado Papers, Periódico la Patria de Cartagena p. 3 - Palabras de Martínez

“At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

“I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

"Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think" (2011)
Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow
Context: An experiment about your next vacation will allow you to observe your attitude to your experiencing self: At the end of the vacation, all pictures and videos will be destroyed. Furthermore, you will swallow a potion that will wipe out all your memories of the vacation. How would this affect your vacation plans? How much would you be willing to pay for it, relative to a normally memorable vacation? My impression is that the elimination of memories greatly reduces the value of the experience.Imagine a painful operation during which you will scream in pain and beg the surgeon to stop. However, you are promised an amnesia-inducing drug that will wipe out any memory of the episode. Here again, my observation is that most people are remarkably indifferent to the pains of their experiencing self. Some say they don’t care at all. Others share my feeling, which is that I feel pity for my suffering self but not more than I would feel for a stranger in pain.I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.

“I am a writer an a singer of the words I write I am no speaker nor any politician an my songs speak for me because I write them in the confinement of my own mind an have t cope with no one except my own self.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Letter sent to the ECLC after Dylan received the Tom Paine Award at the Bill of Rights dinner on December 13, 1963, as reported in "Mr. Dylan Regrets" http://www.hotpress.com/Bob-Dylan/music/interviews/Mr-Dylan-Regrets/2836632.html by Niall Stokes, Hot Press (11 November 2005)

“[This work urges] a clearer separation, in the construction of economic knowledge, between reasoning and recognition of facts, for the better protection of both.”

Tjalling Koopmans (1910–1985) Dutch American economist

Source: Three Essays (1957), p. viii

“The unstoppable compulsion to act, in bigger and wiser ways than you knew possible, has already been set in motion. I’m urging you to trust in that.”

Charles Eisenstein (1967) American writer

The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible http://charleseisenstein.net/project/the-more-beautiful-world-our-hearts-know-is-possible/
The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. The Vision and Practice of Interbeing (2013)

“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.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Susan Sontag 168

Related quotes

Related topics