Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag
Susan Sontagwas an American writer, filmmaker, teacher and political activist. She published her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. Her best-known works include On Photography, Against Interpretation, Styles of Radical Will, The Way We Live Now, Illness as Metaphor, Regarding the Pain of Others, The Volcano Lover and In America...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth16 January 1933
CountryUnited States of America
thinking people may
the appetite for thinking must be regulated, as all sensible people know, for it may stifle one's life.
writing thinking stamina
Thinking, writing are ultimately questions of stamina.
men thinking too-much
One man thinks before he acts. Another man thinks after he acts. Each is of the opinon that the other thinks too much.
ideas people taste
taste governs every free - as opposed to rote - human response. Nothing is more decisive. There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion - and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.
writing thinking talking
I write - and talk - in order to find out what I think.
stupid wheels breaking-down
Intelligence is not necessarily a good thing, something to value or cultivate. It's more like a fifth wheel - necessary or desirable when things break down. When things go well, it's better to be stupid ... Stupidity is as much a value as intelligence.
spiritual journey voyages
The traditional metaphor for a spiritual investigation is that of the voyage or the journey. From this image I must dissociate myself. I do not consider myself a voyager, I have preferred to stand still.
generations spirituality
Each generation has to reinvent spirituality.
government world today
The principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own legally recognized borders.
scar
whatever doesn't kill you leaves scars.
hypocrisy community roles
One of the author's most ancient roles is to call the community to account for its hypocrisies and bad faith ...
distance past cities
A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence. Like a wood fire in a room, photographs-especially those of people, of distant landscapes and faraway cities, of the vanished past-are incitements to reverie. The sense of the unattainable that can be evoked by photographs feeds directly into the erotic feelings of those for whom desirability is enhanced by distance.
emotional giving understanding
Despite the illusion of giving understanding, what seeing through photographs really invites is an acquisitive relation to the world that nourishes aesthetic awareness and promotes emotional detachment.
ignorance disease theory
Theories that diseases are caused by mental states and can be cured by will power, are always an index of how much is not understood about the physical terrain of a disease.