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 More Quotes by Susan Sontag More Quotes From Susan Sontag The highest vocation of photography is to explain man to man. Susan Sontag vocation photography men Dissimulation, secretiveness, appear a necessity to the melancholic. He has complex, often veiled relations with others. These feelings of superiority, of inadequacy, of baffled feeling, of not being able to get what one wants, or even name it properly (or consistently) to oneself — these can be, it is felt they ought to be, masked by friendliness, or the most scrupulous manipulation. Susan Sontag names want feelings Camp is a solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral indignation, sponsors playfulness. Susan Sontag moral-indignation sponsors morality And what do I mean by the word 'perfection'? That I shall not try to explain but only say, 'Perfection makes me laugh.' Not cynically, I hasten to add, 'With joy. Susan Sontag perfection laughing mean I like to feel dumb. That’s how I know there’s more in the world than me. Susan Sontag dumb feels world Modern discussions of the possibility of tragedy are not exercises in literary analysis; they are exercises in cultural diagnostics, more or less disguised. Susan Sontag analysis tragedy exercise The public voice in the theater today is crude and raucous, and, all too often, weak-minded. Susan Sontag voice weak today Norman Mailer records in his recent essays and public appearances his perfecting of himself as a virile instrument of letters; he is perpetually in training, getting ready to launch himself from his own missile pad into a high, beautiful orbit; even his failures may yet be turned to successes. Susan Sontag orbit training beautiful Norman Mailer in his writings is ultimately more concerned with success than with danger; danger is only a means to success. Susan Sontag success writing mean The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony. Susan Sontag minorities moral two Sight is a promiscuous sense. The avid gaze always wants more. Susan Sontag avid sight want Self-exposure is commendable in art only when it is of a quality and complexity that allows other people to learn about themselves from it. Susan Sontag self people art Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras. Susan Sontag cameras seems reality Images are more real than anyone could have supposed. Susan Sontag real reality Literature was the passport to enter a larger life; that is, the zone of freedom. Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom. Susan Sontag passports reading literature Nobody ever discovered ugliness through photographs. But many, through photographs, have discovered beauty. Susan Sontag ugliness photograph photography To collect photographs is to collect the world. Susan Sontag photograph photography world Transparence is the highest, most liberating value in art - and in criticism - today. Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are. Susan Sontag criticism mean art American energy. . . is the energy of violence, of free-floating resentment and anxiety unleashed by chronic cultural dislocations which must be, for the most part, ferociously sublimated. This energy has mainly been sublimated into crude materialism Susan Sontag anxiety floating energy 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
