Images have been reproached for being a way of watching suffering at a distance, as if there were some other way of watching. Susan Sontag More Quotes by Susan Sontag More Quotes From Susan Sontag The feminist movement has been important to me because it's made me feel less odd and also because it has made me understand some of the pressures on women which I was lucky enough to have escaped, perhaps because of my eccentricity or the oddness of my upbringing. Susan Sontag feministluckyimportant I certainly identify myself as a feminist. Susan Sontag feminist I write essays first because I have a passionate relationship to the subject and second because the subject is one that people are not talking about. Susan Sontag writingtalkingpeople Ultimately ideas come out of a temperament or a sensibility, they are a crystallization or a precipitation of temperament. Susan Sontag sensibilitytemperamentideas You can always be quoted. Susan Sontag In a lot of writing or intellectual discourse we're starting to use that model: "Oh, this is where it comes from!" I would like to concentrate on work which is more resistant to that procedure, as I think fiction is. Susan Sontag intellectualwritingthinking When you are writing, you are - from society's point of view - only producing the first version which will then be processed and recycled. Susan Sontag viewswritingfirsts It's not that you make up your ideas to justify your temperament but that it's the temperament first. Susan Sontag justifyideasfirsts I'm interested in the possibility of fiction which straddles narrative and essay. Susan Sontag possibilitynarrativefiction There is an understandable vindictiveness in people who come from Communist countries. They want to keep telling us that we were fools to think that we could make radical changes in our society. Though I understand their dismay, respect their suffering and don't understand the gullibility of some people who don't take in how repressive these societies are, I still think it's important to keep people of all kinds as active in civic matters as possible. Susan Sontag countrypeoplethinking 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). Susan Sontag conservativeeuropeamerica The way in which a certain kind of political idealism has been discredited and scorned makes the danger not that intellectuals keep on making fools of themselves, formulating political opinions when they might not be as informed as they might be, but that they retreat and leave politics to the professionals. Susan Sontag political-opinionsmightway When you see your 40-page essay turned into a "hot tip" in one paragraph in Newsweek, you get anxious about the way your writing has been used. Susan Sontag pageshotwriting I'm more cautious about what I write. Susan Sontag cautiouswriting The writers or artists I write about are not necessarily those I care most about (Shakespeare is still my favourite writer) but those whose work I feel has been neglected. Susan Sontag careartistwriting It's almost as if this is the fundamental procedure in modern society: duplication and recycling. Susan Sontag recyclingmodernfundamentals I'm extremely interested in the Russian formalists and have been for many years. I'm more drawn to their writing, which is expressive and literary, than to writing which is extremely academic or jargon-ridden. Susan Sontag jargonwritingyears I think part of the success which Structuralist or post-Structuralist thought in critical theory has had in literary studies in American universities is due to a theoretical vacuum. Susan Sontag american-universitiesvacuumsthinking Now the new things happening in France don't interest me. Susan Sontag happeningsfranceinterest 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 writingpeoplethinking
