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Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag Quotes

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Famous Susan Sontag Quotes

“I perceive value, I confer value, I create value, I even create — or guarantee — existence. Hence, my compulsion to make “lists.” The things (Beethoven’s music, movies, business firms) won’t exist unless I signify my interest in them by at least noting down their names. Nothing exists unless I maintain it (by my interest, or my potential interest). This is an ultimate, mostly subliminal anxiety. Hence, I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province.”

ValuesNamesInterestExistencePrinciplesAnxietyUltimateListsPerceiveFirmGuaranteesCompulsionProvincesMovie BusinessSubliminal
Book:As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
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“One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves. The very working of this economic system, which has bestowed these unprecedented liberties, most cherished in the form of physical mobility and material prosperity, depends on encouraging people to defy limits.”

PeopleWantFormGrowsLibertySocietyEconomicMaterialsDependsLimitsMessagesProsperityWhat You WantUnprecedentedEconomic SystemsMobility
Book:Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
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“The discovery of the good taste of bad taste can be very liberating. The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself out of the market, so to speak. Here Camp taste supervenes upon good taste as a daring and witty hedonism. It makes the man of good taste cheerful, where before he ran the risk of being chronically frustrated. It is good for the digestion.”

MenSpeakEnjoyPleasureRiskHe ManSeriousExerciseTasteDiscoveryConstantWittyRanCampsDaringFrustratedCheerfulLiberatingGood TasteDigestionBad TasteHedonismDepriving
Author:Susan Sontag
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“[T]he visibility of styles is itself a product of historical consciousness. ... The very notion of "style" needs to be approached historically. Awareness of style as a problematic and isolable element in a work of art has emerged in the audience for art only at certain historical moments - as a front behind which other issues, ultimately ethical and political, are being debated.”

NeedsArtMomentsPoliticalCertainBehindsConsciousnessAudienceIssuesAwarenessStyleFrontsProductsElementsHistoricalNotionCraftsWorks Of ArtEthicalVisibility
Author:Susan Sontag
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“The solution to a problem - a story that you are unable to finish - is the problem. It isn't as if the problem is one thing and the solution something else. The problem, properly understood = the solution. Instead of trying to hide or efface what limits the story, capitalize on that very limitation. State it, rail against it.”

IfsWritingTryingStatesStoriesProblemOne ThingLimitsSolutionsUnderstoodLimitationRailSolution To A Problem
Book:As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
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