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Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag Quotes

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Famous Susan Sontag Quotes

“One task of literature is to formulate questions and construct counterstatements to the reigning pieties. And even when art is not oppositional, the arts gravitate toward contrariness. 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.”

HumansArtMightCultureLiteratureAliveArt IsTasksDialogueEvolveConstructsPietyResponsiveness
Book:Susan Sontag: Ansprachen aus Anlass der Verleihung
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“Self-censorship, the most important and most successful form of censorship, is rampant. Debate is identified with dissent, which is in turn identified with disloyalty. There is a widespread feeling that, in this new, open-ended emergency, we may not be able to 'afford' our traditional freedoms.”

MayImportantSelfFeelingsAbleFormTurnsSuccessfulDebateTraditionalCensorshipEmergenciesDissentDisloyaltySelf Censorship
Book:At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches
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“Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptable for one's private, secret thoughts - like a confidante who is deaf, dumb, and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself. ... The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather - in many cases - offers an alternative to it.”

PersonsDoeSecretCasesRecordsOffersIndependentAlternativesDumbDaily LifeVehicleJournalSuperficialAlasDeafSense Of SelfIlliterateJournalingKeeping A JournalSecret Thoughts
Author:Susan Sontag
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“The wisdom of literature is quite antithetical to having opinions. 'Nothing is my last word about anything,' said Henry James. Furnishing opinions, even correct opinions - whenever asked - cheapens what novelists and poets do best, which is to sponsor reflectiveness, to pursue complexity. Information will never replace illumination.”

SaidLastsLiteratureOpinionInformationPoetPursuePropagandaNovelistsComplexityLast WordsIlluminationSponsors
Book:At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches
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“A lot of what I've written in criticism of my lust for virtue - my discovery that I've committed idolatry, making of the good an idol - is open to the charge of being still caught within the dialectic of idolatry. I've made a moral criticism of my moral consciousness. Meta-idolatry.”

MadeStillsConsciousnessMoralVirtueWrittenMoralityDiscoveryCriticismCaughtCommittedLustIdolsIdolatryDialectics
Book:As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
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“Cinema is a kind of pan-art. It can use, incorporate, engulf virtually any other art: the novel, poetry, theater, painting, sculpture, dance, music, architecture. Unlike opera, which is a (virtually) frozen art form, the cinema is and has been a fruitfully conservative medium of ideas and styles of emotions.”

KindHas BeensArtIdeasUseFormEmotionNovelStylePaintingTheaterConservativeArchitectureMediumsCinemaMovieOperaFrozenSculptureDance Music
Author:Susan Sontag
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“I feel inauthentic at a party. ... Going to a party is a 'low' activity - the authentic self is compromised, fragmented - one plays 'roles.' One isn't fully present, beyond role-playing. One doesn't (can't) tell the full truth, which means one is lying, even if one doesn't literally tell lies.”

IfsFeelsMeanSelfPlayTruthLyingPartyRolesActivityLowsAuthentic SelfFragmentedRole Playing
Book:As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
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“Photography - the supreme form of travel, of tourism - is the principal modern means for enlarging the world. As a branch of art, photography's enterprise of world enlargement tends to specialize in the subjects felt to be challenging, transgressive. A photograph may be telling us: this too exists. And that. And that. (And it is all 'human.') But what are we to do with this knowledge - if indeed it is knowledge, about, say, the self, about abnormality, about ostracized or clandestine worlds?”

IfsWorldHumansMayMeanArtSelfFormFeltChallengesModernSubjectsPhotographyPhotographSupremeBranchesEnterprisePrincipalTourismEnlargementAbnormalityClandestineArt Photography
Author:Susan Sontag
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“Cameras began duplicating the world at that moment when the human landscape started to undergo a vertiginous rate of change: while an untold number of forms of biological and social life are being destroyed in a brief span of time, a device is available to record what is disappearing.”

WorldHumansMomentsFormSocialNumbersRecordsPhotographyCamerasRateAvailableDisappearDestroyedLandscapeDevicesThat MomentSocial LifeRate Of Change
Book:On photography
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