I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province.
Susan SontagWe fret about words, we writers. Words mean. Words point. They are arrows. Arrows stuck in the rough hide of reality. And the more portentous, more general the word, the more they can also resemble rooms or tunnels. They can expand, or cave in. They can come to be filled with a bad smell. They will often remind us of other rooms, where we'd rather dwell or where we think we are already living. They can be spaces we lose the art or the wisdom of inhabiting. And eventually those volumes of mental intention we no longer know how to inhabit will be abandoned, boarded up, closed down.
Susan SontagSelf-censorship, the most important and most successful form of censorship, is rampant. Debate is identified with dissent, which is in turn identified with disloyalty. There is a widespread feeling that, in this new, open-ended emergency, we may not be able to 'afford' our traditional freedoms.
Susan SontagEnemies are somewhere else, as the fighting is almost always โover there,โ with Islamic fundamentalism now replacing Russian and Chinese communism as the implacable, furtive menace. And โterroristโ is a more flexible word than โcommunist.โ It can unify a larger number of quite different struggles and interests. What this may mean is that the war will be endless---since there will always be some terrorism.
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 Sontag