It is not the position, but the disposition. Susan Sontag More Quotes by Susan Sontag More Quotes From Susan Sontag Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution. Poignant longings for beauty, for an end to probing below the surface, for a redemption and celebration of the body of the world. Ultimately, having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it. Susan Sontag women citizens beauty I urge you to be as impudent as you dare. BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BE BOLD. Susan Sontag health courage inspire Literature can train, and exercise, our ability to weep for those who are not us or ours. Susan Sontag ability literature exercise A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not be corrupted - made cynical, superficial - by this understanding. Susan Sontag cynical mean thinking Kindness, kindness, kindness. I want to make a New Year's prayer, not a resolution. I'm praying for courage. Susan Sontag new-year prayer kindness Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place. Susan Sontag get-well-soon sick health The painter constructs, the photographer discloses. Susan Sontag pain photography photographer There is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera. Susan Sontag cameras photography use Intelligence is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. Susan Sontag intelligence intelligent ideas 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. Susan Sontag emotional understanding giving The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions. Susan Sontag answers history interesting It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin. Susan Sontag knowing hurt giving Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. People don't become inured to what they are shown — if that's the right way to describe what happens — because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling. Susan Sontag cynical bored compassion The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own. Susan Sontag women reality people Someone who is perennially surprised that depravity exists, who continues to feel disillusioned (even incredulous) when confronted with evidence of what humans are capable of inflicting in the way of gruesome, hands-on cruelties upon other humans, has not reached moral or psychological adulthood. Susan Sontag moral hands way Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. Susan Sontag design real art My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything. Susan Sontag comeback writing ideas Photographs are perhaps the most mysterious of all the objects that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognize as modern. Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood. Susan Sontag arms cameras photography Photographers are always imposing Susan Sontag imposing photographer Cameras began duplicating the world at that moment when the human landscape started to undergo a vertiginous rate of change: while an untold number of forms of biological and social life are being destroyed in a brief span of time, a device is available to record what is disappearing. Susan Sontag cameras photography numbers
