Any photograph has multiple meanings: indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination. The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: โThere is the surface. Now think โ or rather feel, intuit โ what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.โ Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy
Susan SontagThe truth of history crowds out the truth of fiction - as if one were obliged to choose between them.
Susan SontagOn the level of simple sensation and mood, making love surely resembles an epileptic fit at least as much as, if not more than, it does eating a meal or conversing with someone.
Susan SontagOne task of literature is to formulate questions and construct counterstatements to the reigning pieties. And even when art is not oppositional, the arts gravitate toward contrariness. Literature is dialogue: responsiveness. Literature might be described as the history of human responsiveness to what is alive and what is moribund as cultures evolve and interact with one another.
Susan SontagSuperficial to understand the journal as just a receptable for one's private, secret thoughts - like a confidante who is deaf, dumb, and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself. ... The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather - in many cases - offers an alternative to it.
Susan Sontag