Quote

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.

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
Answers
Contemplation
Existence
Images
Different
Acknowledge
Needs
Several
Make
Oneself
Atrocious
Weakness
Incorrigible
Answer
Numb
Objects
Steel

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I'm not sure at all that literature should be studied on the university level. ... Why should people study books? Isn't it rather silly to study Pride and Prejudice. Either you get it or you don't.
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One man thinks before he acts. Another man thinks after he acts. Each is of the opinon that the other thinks too much.
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One of the author's most ancient roles is to call the community to account for its hypocrisies and bad faith.
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Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.
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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.
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The easiest thing in the world for me is to pay attention.
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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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Taste has no system and no proofs.
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There are more and more taboos about calling something, anything, ugly.
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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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Desire has no history.
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The ideology of capitalism makes us all into connoisseurs of liberty - of the indefinite expansion of possibility.
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