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Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag Quotes

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Famous Susan Sontag Quotes

“The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world 'picturesque.”

WorldJoyCitiesEmpathyPhotographerExtremesVersionsLandscapeSolitaryUrbanStalkingWalkersInfernoAdeptConnoisseurPicturesqueVoluptuousStrollers
Book:On photography
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“Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.”

ArtTodayCultureEnergyIndustryProjectsHeavyIntellectRevengeSensualAtmospherePoisonInterpretationExpensesCapabilitySensibilityUrbanAutomobileDilemmaReactionariesStifling
Book:A Susan Sontag reader
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“People don't become inured to what they are shown - if that's the right way to describe what happens - because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling. The states described as apathy, moral or emotional anesthesia, are full of feelings; the feelings are rage and frustration.”

PeopleIfsWayStatesFeelingsHappensMoralEmotionalRageFrustrationApathyQuantityRight WayPassivityDumpedAnesthesia
Book:Regarding the Pain of Others
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“Marriage is a sort of tacit hunting in couples. The world all in couples, each couple in its own little house, watching its own little interests and stewing in its own little privacy - it's the most repulsive thing in the world. One's got to get rid of the exclusiveness of married love.”

WorldLoveLittlesAgeHouseInterestCoupleMarriedPrivacyHuntingTacitMarried Love
Book:Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963
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“Dissimulation, secretiveness, appear a necessity to the melancholic. He has complex, often veiled relations with others. These feelings of superiority, of inadequacy, of baffled feeling, of not being able to get what one wants, or even name it properly (or consistently) to oneself — these can be, it is felt they ought to be, masked by friendliness, or the most scrupulous manipulation.”

WantFeelingsAbleNamesFeltOughtRelationComplexesOneselfManipulationConsistentlySuperiorityInadequacyFriendlinessBaffled
Author:Susan Sontag
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“Conventions vs. spontaneity. This is a dialectical choice, it depends on the assessment you make of your own times. If you judge that your own time is ridden with empty insincere formalities, you plump for spontaneity, for indecorous behavior even...Much of morality is the task of compensating for one's age. One assumes unfashionable virtues, in an indecorous time. In a time hollowed out by decorum, one must school oneself in spontaneity.”

IfsAgeSchoolChoicesVirtueJudgingDependsMoralityBehaviorTasksEmptyAssumingOneselfConventionsSpontaneityAssessmentFormalityDecorumInsincere
Book:Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963
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“Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. People don't become inured to what they are shown — if that's the right way to describe what happens — because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling.”

IfsNeedsFeelsHas BeensFeelingsActionCan DoEmotionCompassionBoredCynicalUnstableApathetic
Book:Regarding the Pain of Others
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