Quote

The fear of AIDS imposes on an act whose ideal is an experience of pure presentness (and a creation of the future) a relation to the past to be ignored at one's peril. Sex no longer withdraws its partners, if only for a moment, from the social. It cannot be considered just a coupling it is a chain, a chain of transmission, from the past.

Susan Sontag

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Moments
Pure
Ideal
Coupling
Cannot
Creation
Partners
Withdraws
Past
Longer
Aids
Imposes
Future
Considered
Transmission
Moment
Ideals
Peril
Fear
Relation
Chain
Experience
Sex
Ignored
Social
Whose
Chains

More quotes by Susan Sontag

Image
AIDS occupies such a large part in our awareness because of what it has been taken to represent. It seems the very model of all the catastrophes privileged populations feel await them.
Susan Sontag
Image
I feel that I've had enough theoretical speculation to last me a lifetime.
Susan Sontag
Image
The solution to a problem - a story that you are unable to finish - is the problem. It isn't as if the problem is one thing and the solution something else. The problem, properly understood = the solution. Instead of trying to hide or efface what limits the story, capitalize on that very limitation. State it, rail against it.
Susan Sontag
Image
It is easier to endure than to change. But once one has changed, what was endured is hard to recall.
Susan Sontag
Image
I have always been full of lust - as I am now - but I have always been placing conceptual obstacles in my own path.
Susan Sontag
Image
The fact that illness is associated with the poor --who are, from the perspective of the privileged, aliens in one's midst --reinforces the association of illness with the foreign with an exotic, often primitive place.
Susan Sontag
Image
What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.
Susan Sontag
Image
Whoever invented marriage was an ingenious tormentor. It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings. The whole point of marriage is repetition. The best it aims for is the creation of strong, mutual dependencies.
Susan Sontag
Image
Depression is melancholy minus its charms - the animation, the fits.
Susan Sontag
Image
It is the action of bodies on bodies, not bodies on minds, which the crowd enjoys.
Susan Sontag
Image
The truth is balance. However the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.
Susan Sontag
Image
To emphasize style is to slight content, or to introduce an attitude which is neutral with respect to content.
Susan Sontag
Image
Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person - is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.
Susan Sontag
Image
I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.
Susan Sontag
Image
10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.
Susan Sontag
Image
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.
Susan Sontag
Image
All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no.
Susan Sontag
Image
In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.
Susan Sontag
Image
The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.
Susan Sontag
Image
Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them.
Susan Sontag