In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself. Susan Sontag More Quotes by Susan Sontag More Quotes From Susan Sontag Conventions vs. spontaneity. This is a dialectical choice, it depends on the assessment you make of your own times. If you judge that your own time is ridden with empty insincere formalities, you plump for spontaneity, for indecorous behavior even...Much of morality is the task of compensating for one's age. One assumes unfashionable virtues, in an indecorous time. In a time hollowed out by decorum, one must school oneself in spontaneity. Susan Sontag assessment judging school Tamed as it may be, sexuality remains one of the demonic forces in human consciousness - pushing us at intervals close to taboo and dangerous desires, which range from the impulse to commit sudden arbitrary violence upon another person to the voluptuous yearning for the extinction of one's consciousness, for death itself. Even on the level of simple physical sensation and mood, making love surely resembles having an epileptic fit at least as much as, if not more than, it does eating a meal or conversing with someone. Susan Sontag simple desire love It is the nature of aphoristic thinking to be always in a state of concluding; a bid to have the final word is inherent in all powerful phrase-making. Susan Sontag finals powerful thinking Nature in America has always been suspect, on the defensive, cannibalized by progress. In America, every specimen becomes a relic. Susan Sontag progress nature america Remember when you hear yourself saying one day that you don't have time anymore to read or listen to music or look at paintings or go to the movies or do whatever feeds your head now. Then you're getting old. That means they got you, after all. Susan Sontag learning one-day mean The becoming of man is the history of the exhaustion of his possibilities. Susan Sontag becoming men history Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals. Susan Sontag pain bears art We are told we must choose - the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is a life if not a series of negotiations between the old and the new? Susan Sontag understanding choices facts I do not think white America is committed to granting equality to the American Negro... this is a passionately racist country; it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future. Susan Sontag equality country thinking What pornography is really about, ultimately, isn't sex but death. Susan Sontag pornography death sex 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. Susan Sontag dubious criticism art Try not to live in a linguistic slum. Susan Sontag slums trying A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing. Susan Sontag said Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Susan Sontag kissing inspiration waiting The taste for worst-case scenarios reflects the need to master fear of what is felt to be uncontrollable. It also expresses an imaginative complicity with disaster. Susan Sontag worst-case-scenario taste needs Mad people = People who stand alone and burn. I'm attracted to them because they give me permission to do the same. Susan Sontag mad giving people The quality of American life is an insult to the possibilities of human growth... the pollution of American space, with gadgetry and cars and TV and box architecture, brutalizes the senses, making gray neurotics of most of us, and perverse spiritual athletes and strident self-transcenders of the best of us. Susan Sontag athlete spiritual life It is a nostalgic time right now, and photographs actively promote nostalgia. Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos. ... All photographs are memento mori. To take 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 photography twilight art Art is not consciousness per se, but rather its antidote- evolved from within consciousness itself. Susan Sontag art-is consciousness art Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them. Susan Sontag becoming healthy alive
