Quotes by Susan Sontag

About Susan Sontag:

Susan Sontag was an American writer and filmmaker, teacher and political activist, publishing 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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.

Susan Sontag

To take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt.

Susan Sontag

Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs.

Susan Sontag

'Camp' is a vision of the world in terms of style - but a particular style. It is the love of the exaggerated.

Susan Sontag

What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.

Susan Sontag

What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.

Susan Sontag

The truth is balance. However the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.

Susan Sontag

Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race ...

Susan Sontag

I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces ‘intelligence.

Susan Sontag

The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more.

Susan Sontag

Psychological theories of illness are a powerful means of placing the blame on the ill. Patients who are instructed that they have, unwittingly, caused their disease are also being made to feel that they have deserved it.

Susan Sontag

Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.

Susan Sontag

If literature has engaged me as a project, first as a reader, then as a writer, it is as an extension of my sympathies to other selves, other domains, other dreams, other territories.

Susan Sontag

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as collective memory--part of the same family of spurious notions as collective guilt. But there is collective instruction....What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this...

Susan Sontag

Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.

Susan Sontag

All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless m...

Susan Sontag

Today everything exists to end in a photograph.

Susan Sontag

Time eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art.

Susan Sontag

Recently, photography has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing – which means that, like every mass art form, photography is not practiced by most people as art. It is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and...

Susan Sontag

İnsan sonsuza dek kraliçe kalamaz. Gücünü devam ettirebilmek için ya tahttan vazgeçeceksin, yahut da şehit edileceksin. Ben birincisini seçtim.

Susan Sontag

The problems of this world are only truly solved in two ways: by extinction or by duplication

Susan Sontag

Author Bio

  • NameSusan Sontag
  • DescriptionAmerican writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist
  • BornJanuary 16, 1933
  • DiedDecember 28, 2004
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Film Director; Screenwriter; Professor; Essayist; Novelist
  • WorksOn Photography; Against Interpretation; Illness As Metaphor; AIDS And Its Metaphors; Under The Sign Of Saturn
  • AwardsJerusalem Prize; Prince Of Asturia Literary Prize; Peace Prize Of The German Book Trade; National Book Award; George Polk Award