Susan Sontag Quotes

47 quotes

American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist (1933–2004)

“Time eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art.”

"Desire wills its perpetuation ad infinitum."

on Philosophy

"Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past present and future."

on Philosophy

"Narratives can make us understand. Photographs do something else: they haunt us."

on Art

"Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art."

on Art

"A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.", Frankfurt Book Fair, October 12, 2003]"

on Writing

"What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine."

on Love

"Although none of the rules for becoming alive is valid it is healthy to keep on formulating them."

on Life

"I was not looking for my dreams to interpret my life, but rather for my life to interpret my dreams."

on Dreams

"The truth is balance. However the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie."

on Truth

"What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine."

on Gender

"Life is not about significant details illuminated in a flash fixed forever. Photographs are."

on Life

"My urge to write is an urge not to self-expressionism but to self-transcendence. My work is both bigger and smaller than I am."

on Writing

"Ambition if it feeds at all does so on the ambition of others."

on Success

"I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces ‘intelligence."

on Wisdom

"Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager."

on Life

"Photographs shock insofar as they show something novel."

on Art

"Life is not about significant details, illuminated a flash, fixed forever.Photographs are."

on Life

"The painter constructs, the photographer discloses."

on Art

"Today everything exists to end in a photograph."

on Art

"Can I love someone...and still think/fly? Love is flying, sown, floating. Thought is solitary flight, beating wings."

on Love