What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine. Susan Sontag More Quotes by Susan Sontag More Quotes From Susan Sontag Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person - is extremely perishable. Susan Sontag physical-beautymoralart Thinking, writing are ultimately questions of stamina. Susan Sontag staminawritingthinking the appetite for thinking must be regulated, as all sensible people know, for it may stifle one's life. Susan Sontag maypeoplethinking The basic unit for contemporary art is not the idea, but the analysis of and extension of sensations. Susan Sontag analysisideasart The tradition of portrait painting, to embellish or idealize the subject, remains the aim of everyday and of commercial photography, but it has had a much more limited career in photography considered as art. Generally speaking, the honors have gone to the Cordelias. Susan Sontag careersphotographyart My library is an archive of longings. Susan Sontag readinginspirationalbook The moral pleasure in art, as well as the moral service that art performs, consists in the intelligent gratification of consciousness. Susan Sontag moralintelligentart The history of art is a sequence of successful transgressions. Susan Sontag transgressionsuccessfulart The purpose of art is always, ultimately, to give pleasure - though our sensibilities may take time to catch up with the forms of pleasure that art in a given time may offer. Susan Sontag purposegivingart Surrealism in painting amounted to little more than the contents of a meagerly stocked dream world: a few witty fantasies, mostly wet dreams and agoraphobic nightmares. Susan Sontag dreamwittyworld By furnishing this already crowded world with a duplicate one of images, photography makes us feel that the world is more available than it really is. Susan Sontag photographyfeelsworld whatever doesn't kill you leaves scars. Susan Sontag scar The principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own legally recognized borders. Susan Sontag bordersgovernmentworld To emphasize style is to slight content, or to introduce an attitude which is neutral with respect to content. Susan Sontag introducingstyleattitude Theories that diseases are caused by mental states and can be cured by will power, are always an index of how much is not understood about the physical terrain of a disease. Susan Sontag diseasestatesignorance I write in spurts. I write when I have to because the pressure builds up and I feel enough confidence that something has matured in my head and I can write it down. But once something is really under way, I don't want to do anything else. I don't go out, much of the time I forget to eat, I sleep very little. It's a very undisciplined way of working and makes me not very prolific. But I'm too interested in many other things. Susan Sontag wantsleepwriting A good listener: a physical presence that is warm, alert, intelligent - more important than any words. Susan Sontag intelligentimportantlistening 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 readingdreamwriting The easiest thing in the world for me is to pay attention. Susan Sontag payattentionworld writers are makers, not just transmitters, of myths. Literature offers not only myths but counter-myths, just as life offers counter-experiences - experiences that confound what you thought you thought, or felt, or believed. Susan Sontag mythmakersliterature
