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Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag Quotes

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Famous Susan Sontag Quotes

“Fear of sexuality is the new, disease-sponsored register of the universe of fear in which everyone now lives. Cancerphobia taught us the fear of a polluting environment; now we have the fear of polluting people that AIDS anxiety inevitably communicates. Fear of the Communion cup, fear of surgery: fear of contaminated blood, whether Christ's blood or your neighbor's.”

PeopleUniverseChristEnvironmentBloodTaughtDiseaseAnxietyCommunicateSexualityAidsNeighborCupsCommunionSurgeryRegisterTaught Us
Author:Susan Sontag
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“It's not 'natural' to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting, articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little - have few verbal means. Eloquence - thinking in words - is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups, it's more natural to sing, to dance, to pray: given, rather than invented (individual) speech.”

PeopleThinkingWayWellsMeanLittlesIndividualSpeakGivenNaturalInterestingGroupsPrayingSolitudeSpeechIndividualityPainfulEloquenceCommunes
Book:As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Diaries 1964-1980
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“A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence. Like a wood fire in a room, photographs-especially those of people, of distant landscapes and faraway cities, of the vanished past-are incitements to reverie. The sense of the unattainable that can be evoked by photographs feeds directly into the erotic feelings of those for whom desirability is enhanced by distance.”

PeopleFeelingsPastRoomsCitiesFireDistancePhotographWoodsAbsenceLandscapeEroticTokensUnattainablePseudoReverieDesirabilityIncitement
Book:On photography
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“There is an understandable vindictiveness in people who come from Communist countries. They want to keep telling us that we were fools to think that we could make radical changes in our society. Though I understand their dismay, respect their suffering and don't understand the gullibility of some people who don't take in how repressive these societies are, I still think it's important to keep people of all kinds as active in civic matters as possible.”

PeopleThinkingWantKindStillsImportantCountryMatterSufferingFoolActiveAll KindsRadicalOur SocietyCommunistCivicsGullibilityDismayRadical ChangeVindictiveness
Author:Susan Sontag
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“Most writers I know have switched to word processors. I haven't but I'm very curious about why people like it so much. I think it has something to do with the fact that at last writing, which has been such an old-fashioned, artisanal activity, even on a typewriter, has now entered the central domain of modern experience which is that of making copies, being involved in the world of duplicates and machine-mediated activities.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWorldWritingHas BeensFactsLastsModernHavensInvolvedActivityMachinesCuriousCopiesOld FashionedDomainTypewritersDuplicateProcessors
Author:Susan Sontag
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“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.”

PeopleTurnsSeeingObjectsGunMurderCamerasPhotographAppropriateFrightenedPossessedSubliminal
Book:On photography
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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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“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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“Knowing a great deal about what is in the world art, catastrophe, the beauties of nature through photographic images, people are frequently disappointed, surprised, unmoved when the see the real thing. For photographic images tend to subtract feeling from something we experience at first hand and the feelings they do arouse are, largely, not those we have in real life. Often something disturbs us more in photographed form than it does when we actually experience it.”

PeopleWorldFirstsDoeArtRealFeelingsHandsFormDealsKnowingPhotographReal LifeDisappointedCatastropheReal ThingsNature Beauty
Book:On photography
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