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Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Susan Sontag

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Susan Sontag
Age: 71 †
Born: 1933
Born: January 16
Died: 2004
Died: December 28
Author
Essayist
Feminist
Film Critic
Film Director
Historian
Human Rights Activist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
New York City
New York
Susan Rosenblatt
Indicate
Entire
Judgments
Judgment
Failure
Critic
Courses
Sensibility
Course
Entitled
Wrong
Radical
Certain
Critics
Lapses
Criticism

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Left-wing movements have tended to be unisex, and asexual in their imagery. Right-wing movements, however puritanical and repressive the realities they usher in, have an erotic surface. Certainly Nazism is sexier than communism.
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His view of time, and of change, has become that of most elderly people: he hates change, since for him - for his body - any change is for the worse. And if there is to be change, then he wants it to happen quickly, so it does not use up too much of the time remaining to him.
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The unit of the poet is the word, the unit of the prose writer is the sentence.
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Strictly speaking, it is doubtful that a photograph can help us understand anything.
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Kindness, kindness, kindness. I want to make a New Year's prayer, not a resolution. I'm praying for courage.
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the appetite for thinking must be regulated, as all sensible people know, for it may stifle one's life.
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Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories.
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In the United States it's not important which religion you adhere to, as long as you have one.
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As 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 existence of the incorrigible.
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When something is just bad, it's often because it is too mediocre in its ambition. The artist hasn't attempted to do anything really outlandish.
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The truth is balance. However the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.
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We are ruled by quotations.
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And what do I mean by the word 'perfection'? That I shall not try to explain but only say, 'Perfection makes me laugh.' Not cynically, I hasten to add, 'With joy.
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What interests me is to understand the nature of the modern.
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The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.
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If tragedy is an experience of hyperinvolvement, comedy is an experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.
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The really important thing is not to reject anything.
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Being in love means being willing to ruin yourself for the other person.
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Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.
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A work of art, so far as it is a work of art, cannot - whatever the artist's personal intention - advocate anything at all.
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