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The principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own legally recognized borders.

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
World
Borders
Instance
Committed
Mass
Legally
Violence
Instances
Within
Principal
Government
Recognized
Today
Governments

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whatever doesn't kill you leaves scars.
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One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves.
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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.
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Instead of expecting all and being lowered into despair each time I get less, I expect nothing now and, occasionally, I get a little, and am more than a little happy.
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Fatal illness has always been viewed as a test of moral character, but in the nineteenth century there is a great reluctance to let anybody flunk the test.
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Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible of making it stand still. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images — as, according to Proust, most ambitious of voluntary prisoners, one can't possess the present but one can possessthe past.
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I have always been full of lust - as I am now - but I have always been placing conceptual obstacles in my own path.
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In every society, the definitions of sanity and madness are arbitrary - are, in the largest sense, political.
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Currently intellectuals in Western Europe and North America are extremely demoralized and shaken by the rise of a virulent conservative tendency (which some have even joined).
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The danger, when not too dangerous, fascinate.
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Life is not significant details, illuminated by a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are.
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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.
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That even an apocalypse can be made to seem part of the ordinary horizon of expectation constitutes an unparalleled violence that is being done to our sense of reality, to our humanity.
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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.
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Nature in America has always been suspect, on the defensive, cannibalized by progress. In America, every specimen becomes a relic.
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Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are
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Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.
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This is the beauty that emerges from self-confidence, class confidence. That says, I am not born to please. I am born to be pleased.
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The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.
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Creativity needs to be taken care of. It's like a big baby that needs to be nourished.
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