One can never ask anyone to change a feeling. Susan Sontag More Quotes by Susan Sontag More Quotes From Susan Sontag Decline of the letter, the rise of the notebook! One doesn't write to others any more; one writes to oneself. Susan Sontag notebook letters writing ...what I write is smarter than I am. Because I can rewrite it. Susan Sontag because-i-can smarter writing 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. Susan Sontag voyages journey spiritual Most writers I know have switched to word processors. I haven't but I'm very curious about why people like it so much. I think it has something to do with the fact that at last writing, which has been such an old-fashioned, artisanal activity, even on a typewriter, has now entered the central domain of modern experience which is that of making copies, being involved in the world of duplicates and machine-mediated activities. Susan Sontag typewriters writing thinking I can't say I know how to change the society, but I share the feeling that this society is full of technology which depersonalizes people, which seems to drain a sense of reality from our lives. It's full of a lot of other things too. Susan Sontag technology reality people I was fascinated by quotations and lists. And then I noticed that other people were fascinated by quotations and lists: people as different as Borges and Walter Benjamin, Novalis and Godard. Susan Sontag lists different people America was founded on a genocide, on the unquestioned assumption of the right of white Europeans to exterminate a resident, technologically backward, colored population in order to take over the continent. Susan Sontag white order america If within the last century art conceived as an autonomous activity has come to be invested with an unprecedented stature - the nearest thing to a sacramental human activity acknowledged by secular society - it is because one of the tasks art has assumed is making forays into and taking up positions on the frontiers of consciousness (often very dangerous to the artist as a person) and reporting back what's there. Susan Sontag secular-society tasks art One man thinks before he acts. Another man thinks after he acts. Each is of the opinon that the other thinks too much. Susan Sontag too-much men thinking In NY sensuality completely turns into sexuality - no objects for the senses to respond to, no beautiful river, houses, people. Awful smells of the street, and dirt... Nothing except eating, if that, and the frenzy of the bed. Susan Sontag smell rivers beautiful Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos. Susan Sontag photography twilight art To camp is a mode of seduction... Behind the 'straight' public sense in which something can be taken, one has found a private zany experience of the thing. Susan Sontag seduction taken found Fear of sexuality is the new, disease-sponsored register of the universe of fear in which everyone now lives. Susan Sontag sexuality disease fear Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Susan Sontag sick health night The photographer both loots and preserves, denounces and consecrates. Susan Sontag preserves photography photographer The destiny of photography has taken it far beyond the role to which it was originally thought to be limited: to give more accurate reports on reality (including works of art). Photography is the reality; the real object is often experienced as a letdown. Susan Sontag photography real art Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself? It's far more interesting to write about others. Susan Sontag writing might interesting My emotional life: dialectic between craving for privacy and need to submerge myself in a passionate relationship to another. Susan Sontag passionate emotional needs What interests me is to understand the nature of the modern. Susan Sontag modern interest The fact that illness is associated with the poor --who are, from the perspective of the privileged, aliens in one's midst --reinforces the association of illness with the foreign with an exotic, often primitive place. Susan Sontag exotic perspective association
