All understanding begins with our not accepting the world as it appears.
SUSAN SONTAGOne doesn’t need to know the artist’s private intentions. The work tells all.
More Susan Sontag Quotes
-
-
Photographers are always imposing.
SUSAN SONTAG -
In ‘life,’ I don’t want to be reduced to my work. In ‘work,’ I don’t want to be reduced to my life.
SUSAN SONTAG -
Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.
SUSAN SONTAG -
Mallarme said that everything in the world exists in order to end in a book. Today everything exists to end in a photograph.
SUSAN SONTAG -
Wherever people feel safe – they will be indifferent.
SUSAN SONTAG -
To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing – a hand worker in an era of mass production.
SUSAN SONTAG -
10 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.
SUSAN SONTAG -
If tragedy is an experience of hyperinvolvement, comedy is an experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.
SUSAN SONTAG -
Self-respect. It would make me lovable. And it’s the secret to good sex.
SUSAN SONTAG -
Literature can train, and exercise, our ability to weep for those who are not us or ours.
SUSAN SONTAG -
It 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 -
Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.
SUSAN SONTAG -
It is easier to endure than to change. But once one has changed, what was endured is hard to recall.
SUSAN SONTAG -
I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces ‘intelligence.
SUSAN SONTAG -
My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything.
SUSAN SONTAG