One can know worlds one has not experienced, choose a response to life that has never been offered, create an inwardness utterly strong and fruitful.
Susan SontagMy urge to write is an urge not to self-expressionism but to self-transcendence. My work is both bigger and smaller than I am.
Susan SontagIt's beginnings that are hard. I always begin with a great sense of dread and trepidation. Nietzsche says that the decision to start writing is like leaping into a cold lake.
Susan SontagKindness, kindness, kindness. I want to make a New Year's prayer, not a resolution. I'm praying for courage.
Susan SontagImages anesthetize. An event known through photographs certainly becomes more real than it would have been if one had never seen the photographs ... But after repeated exposure to images it also becomes less real. ... 'concerned' photography has done at least as much to deaden conscience as to arouse it.
Susan Sontag[T]he visibility of styles is itself a product of historical consciousness. ... The very notion of "style" needs to be approached historically. Awareness of style as a problematic and isolable element in a work of art has emerged in the audience for art only at certain historical moments - as a front behind which other issues, ultimately ethical and political, are being debated.
Susan Sontag