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Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag Quotes

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Famous Susan Sontag Quotes

“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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“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.”

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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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“I write in spurts. I write when I have to because the pressure builds up and I feel enough confidence that something has matured in my head and I can write it down. But once something is really under way, I don't want to do anything else. I don't go out, much of the time I forget to eat, I sleep very little. It's a very undisciplined way of working and makes me not very prolific. But I'm too interested in many other things.”

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Author:Susan Sontag
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