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The past itself, as historical change continues to accelerate, has become the most surreal of subjects - making it possible... to see a new beauty in what is vanishing.
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
Possible
Making
Vanishing
Past
Accelerate
Become
Surreal
Change
Continues
Time
Historical
Subjects
Beauty
More quotes by Susan Sontag
In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.
Susan Sontag
Although photography generates works that can be called art-it requires subjectivity, it can lie, it gives aesthetic pleasure-photography is not, to begin with, an art form at all. Like language, it is a medium in which works of art (among other things) are made.
Susan Sontag
In every society, the definitions of sanity and madness are arbitrary - are, in the largest sense, political.
Susan Sontag
Sanity is a cozy lie.
Susan Sontag
Time may enhance what seems simply dogged or lacking in fantasy now because we are too close to it, because it resembles too closely our own everyday fantasies, the fantastic nature of which we don't perceive. We are better able to enjoy a fantasy as a fantasy when it is not our own.
Susan Sontag
I have been told that I am a natural feminist, someone who was born a feminist. In fact I was quite blind to what the problem was: I couldn't understand why anyone would hesitate to do what they wanted to do just because they were told that women didn't do such things.
Susan Sontag
Lying is the most simple form of self-defence.
Susan Sontag
All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no.
Susan Sontag
Most men experience getting older with regret, apprehension. But most women experience it even more painfully: with shame. Aging is a man's destiny, something that must happen because he is a human being. For a woman, aging is not only her destiny . . . it is also her vulnerability.
Susan Sontag
One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves.
Susan Sontag
Art is seduction, not rape.
Susan Sontag
Writing is a mysterious activity.
Susan Sontag
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.
Susan Sontag
A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility what human nature is of what happens in the world. It's a creator of inwardness.
Susan Sontag
The freakish is no longer a private zone, difficult of access. People who are bizarre, in sexual disgrace, emotionally violent areseen daily on the newsstands, on TV, in the subways. Hobbesian man roams the streets, quite visible, with glitter in his hair.
Susan Sontag
Rules of taste enforce structures of power.
Susan Sontag
In a lot of writing or intellectual discourse we're starting to use that model: Oh, this is where it comes from! I would like to concentrate on work which is more resistant to that procedure, as I think fiction is.
Susan Sontag
What I really wanted was every kind of life, and the writer’s life seemed the most inclusive.
Susan Sontag
Intelligence is not necessarily a good thing, something to value or cultivate. It's more like a fifth wheel - necessary or desirable when things break down. When things go well, it's better to be stupid ... Stupidity is as much a value as intelligence.
Susan Sontag
To paraphrase several sages: Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.
Susan Sontag
