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Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag Quotes

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Famous Susan Sontag Quotes

“One of my oldest crusades is against the distinction between thought and feeling, which is really the basis of all anti-intellectual views: the heart and the head, thinking and feeling, fantasy and judgment . . . and I don’t believe it’s true. . . . I have the impression that thinking is a form of feeling and that feeling is a form of thinking.”

ThinkingHeartBrainFeelingIntellectualismDichotomy
Book:Susan Sontag: The Complete Rolling Stone Interview
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“We fret about words, we writers. Words mean. Words point. They are arrows. Arrows stuck in the rough hide of reality. And the more portentous, more general the word, the more they can also resemble rooms or tunnels. They can expand, or cave in. They can come to be filled with a bad smell. They will often remind us of other rooms, where we'd rather dwell or where we think we are already living. They can be spaces we lose the art or the wisdom of inhabiting. And eventually those volumes of mental intention we no longer know how to inhabit will be abandoned, boarded up, closed down.”

ThinkingKnowsWritingMeanArtRealityLosesSpaceRoomsKnow HowFilledIntentionSmellStuckRoughAbandonedVolumeCavesArrowsTunnelsMean Words
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 writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not be corrupted - made cynical, superficial - by this understanding.”

ThinkingWorldTryingHumansMeanMadeUnderstandingHuman BeingsPayAttentionCapablePay AttentionCynicalSuperficialWickedness
Book:Susan Sontag: Ansprachen aus Anlass der Verleihung
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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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“The quote is always fascinating because it changes out of context, becomes different and sometimes more mysterious. It has a directness and assertiveness it may not have had in the original. I think the quality of inaccessibility, the mystery, is important - that whatever matters can't be taken in on just one reading or one seeing. This is certainly a quality of the little of art that lasts.”

ThinkingMayLittlesArtImportantDifferentSometimesMatterLastsReadingQualityTakenSeeingMysteryOriginalsMysteriousJust OneFascinatingAssertivenessOf Context
Author:Susan Sontag
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“Any photograph has multiple meanings: indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination. The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: “There is the surface. Now think – or rather feel, intuit – what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.’ Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy”

IfsThinkingWayFeelsLooksRealityFormFantasyObjectsUltimatePhotographSurfaceEncountersMultipleSpeculationInvitationsFascinationDeductionsMultiple Meanings
Book:On photography
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