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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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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
Makes
Interpretation
Scheme
Art
Highly
Article
Work
Content
Composed
Mental
Items
Criticism
Schemes
Based
Arrangements
Violates
Theory
Articles
Dubious
Use
Categories
Arrangement

More quotes by Susan Sontag

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I was not looking for my dreams to interpret my life, but rather for my life to interpret my dreams.
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We are ruled by quotations.
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Surrealism in painting amounted to little more than the contents of a meagerly stocked dream world: a few witty fantasies, mostly wet dreams and agoraphobic nightmares.
Susan Sontag
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Each of us carries a room within ourselves, waiting to be furnished and peopled, and if you listen closely, you may need to silence everything in your own room, you can hear the sounds of that other room inside your head.
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To make your life being a writer, it's an auto-slavery ... you are both the slave and the task-master.
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The happening operates by creating an asymmetrical network of surprises, without climax or consummation, this is the alogism of dreams rather than the logic of most art.
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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What interests me is to understand the nature of the modern.
Susan Sontag
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In America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it.
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All struggle, all resistance is -- must be -- concrete. And all struggle has a global resonance. If not here, then there. If not now, then soon. Elsewhere as well as here.
Susan Sontag
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War tears, rends. War rips open, eviscerates. War scorches. War dismembers. War ruins.
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The basic unit for contemporary art is not the idea, but the analysis of and extension of sensations.
Susan Sontag
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When we're afraid we shoot. But when we're nostalgic we take pictures.
Susan Sontag
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I didn't think of myself as importing, I thought it was more interesting to write about things people didn't know about than what they did. When I became aware that I was in fact importing, I stopped doing it.
Susan Sontag
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Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures.
Susan Sontag
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Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.
Susan Sontag
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The possession of a camera can inspire something akin to lust. And like all credible forms of lust, it cannot be satisfied.
Susan Sontag
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Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself? It's far more interesting to write about others.
Susan Sontag
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Images are more real than anyone could have supposed.
Susan Sontag
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I don't write easily or rapidly. My first draft usually has only a few elements worth keeping. I have to find what those are and build from them and throw out what doesn't work, or what simply is not alive.
Susan Sontag