Susan Sontag10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.371Reflection
Susan SontagA great writer has all 4 - but you can still be a good writer with only 1 and 2. ✨ Susan Sontag (2008). Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963, Farrar, Straus and Giroux<… ▶361Reading
Susan Sontag...to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude. ✨ Susan Sontag (2013). Regarding the Pain of Others, p.46, Macmillan361Sadness
Susan SontagA photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened. The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which i… ▶372Life
Susan SontagTo take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to t… ▶374DeathTime
Susan SontagFewer and fewer Americans possess objects that have a patina, old furniture, grandparents pots and pans - the used things, warm with generations of human touch, essential to a hum… ▶352Humanity
Susan SontagOur appreciations, it was felt, could be so much more inclusive if we said that something, instead of being beautiful, was 'interesting'. ✨ Susan Sontag (2007). At the Same … ▶353Time
Susan SontagTo suffer is one thing; another thing is living with the photographed images of suffering, which does not necessarily strengthen conscience and the ability to be compassionate. It… ▶375LifeLove
Susan SontagIt is passivity that dulls feeling. ✨ Susan Sontag (2013). Regarding the Pain of Others, p.102, Macmillan353Sadness
Susan SontagTime eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art. ✨ Susan Sontag (2011). On Photography, p.22, Macmillan331Time
Susan SontagAs objects of contemplation, images of the atrocious can answer to several different needs. To steel oneself against weakness. To make oneself more numb. To acknowledge the existe… ▶353LifeSadness
Susan SontagVictims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt. ✨ Susan Sontag (2013). Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and … ▶353Thought
Susan SontagAlthough none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them. ✨ Susan Sontag (1983). A Susan Sontag reader, Vintage375LifeReading
Susan SontagWhy wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself? It's far more interesting to write about others.332Philosophy
Susan SontagI have always been full of lust - as I am now - but I have always been placing conceptual obstacles in my own path. ✨ Susan Sontag (2009). Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 19… ▶343Reading
Susan SontagThe work of art itself is . . . a vibrant, magical, and exemplary object which returns us to the world in some way more open and enriched. ✨ Susan Sontag (1983). A Susan Son… ▶332Reading
Susan SontagGrowing older is mainly an ordeal of the imagination-a moral disease, a social pathology.321Hope
Susan SontagTime exists in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once…and space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you. ✨ Susan Sontag (2007). At the Same Time: Essays and Sp… ▶365Time
Susan SontagPeople 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… ▶321HumanityPoliticsSadness
Susan SontagBecause each photograph is only a fragment, its moral and emotional weight depends on where it is inserted. A photograph changes according to the context in which it is seen: thus… ▶365LifePhilosophyPolitics
Susan SontagThe ideology of capitalism makes us all into connoisseurs of liberty - of the indefinite expansion of possibility. ✨ Susan Sontag (2013). Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and It… ▶365Life
Susan SontagThe life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.343Life
Susan SontagPhotographs may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow. Each still photograph is a privileged moment turned into a slim object tha… ▶377Time
Susan SontagI want to live as long as possible, just to see how stupid it gets.344Reflection
Susan SontagDeath is unbearable unless you can get beyond the I.322Death
Susan SontagIt hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin. ✨ Susan Sontag (2009). Reborn: Jou… ▶366LoveReadingTime
Susan SontagI discovered that I am tired of being a person. Not just tired of being the person I was, but any person at all ✨ Susan Sontag (2017). Stories: Collected Stories, p.99, Peng… ▶377Sadness
Susan SontagEnemies are somewhere else, as the fighting is almost always “over there,” with Islamic fundamentalism now replacing Russian and Chinese communism as the implacable, furtive menac… ▶322Time
Susan SontagWriting is a mysterious activity.344Humanity
Susan SontagArt is seduction, not rape. ✨ Susan Sontag (1983). A Susan Sontag reader, Vintage366Reading
