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Writing is a mysterious activity.

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
Mysterious
Activity
Writing

More quotes by Susan Sontag

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Never worry about being obsessive. I like obsessive people. Obsessive people make great art
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Painters and sculptors under the Nazis often depicted the nude, but they were forbidden to show any bodily imperfections. Their nudes look like pictures in physique magazines: pinups which are both sanctimoniously asexual and (in a technical sense) pornographic, for they have the perfection of a fantasy.
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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.
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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
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I make an idol of my moral consciousness. My pursuit of the good is corrupted by the sin of idolatry.
Susan Sontag
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The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more.
Susan Sontag
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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.
Susan Sontag
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Cancer is a demonic pregnancy.
Susan Sontag
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We live in a world of copies and we're fascinated when we encounter the originals (in a museum, for instance).
Susan Sontag
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The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community.
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No 'we' should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people's pain.
Susan Sontag
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One criticizes in others what one recognizes and despises in oneself. For example, an artist who is revolted by another’s ambitiousness.
Susan Sontag
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To 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 time's relentless melt.
Susan Sontag
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The moral pleasure in art, as well as the moral service that art performs, consists in the intelligent gratification of consciousness.
Susan Sontag
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You can always be quoted.
Susan Sontag
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Mad people = People who stand alone and burn. I'm attracted to them because they give me permission to do the same.
Susan Sontag
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When you are writing, you are - from society's point of view - only producing the first version which will then be processed and recycled.
Susan Sontag
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It's beginnings that are hard. I always begin with a great sense of dread and trepidation. Nietzsche says that the decision to start writing is like leaping into a cold lake.
Susan Sontag
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One cannot use the life to interpret the work. But One can use the work to interpret the life.
Susan Sontag
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I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.
Susan Sontag