Our appreciations, it was felt, could be so much more inclusive if we said that something, instead of being beautiful, was 'interesting'.
Susan SontagDecline of the letter, the rise of the notebook! One doesn't write to others any more; one writes to oneself.
Susan SontagThe romantic treatment of death asserts that people were made singular, made more interesting, by their illnesses.
Susan SontagAl forms of consensus about ''great'' books and ''perennial'' problems, once stabilized, tend to deteriorate eventually into something philistine. The real life of the mind is always at the frontiers of ''what is already known.'' Those great books don't only need custodians and transmitters. To stay alive, they also need adversaries. The most interesting ideas are heresies.
Susan Sontag