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Susan Sontag

12 quotesNovelist · Born Jan 16, 1933 · Died Dec 28, 2004 · American · Female

Susan Sontag (/ˈsɒntæɡ/; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was a Jewish-American writer, film-maker, teacher, and political activist. She published her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. Her best-known works include On Photography, Against Interpretation, Styles of Radical Will, The Way We Live Now, Illness as Metaphor, Regarding the Pain of Others, The Volcano Lover, and In America. Sontag was active in writing and speaking about, or travelling to, areas of conflict, including during the Vietnam War and the Siege of Sarajevo. She wrote extensively about photography, culture and media, AIDS and illness, human rights, and communism and leftist ideology. Although her essays and speeches sometimes drew controversy, she has been described as "one of the most influential critics of her generation." 2Early life and education Sontag was born Susan Rosenblatt in New York City, the daughter of Mildred (née Jacobson) and Jack Rosenblatt, both Jews of Lithuanian and Polish descent. Her father managed a fur trading business in China, where he died of tuberculosis in 1939, when Susan was five years old. Seven years later, her mother married U.S. Army Captain Nathan Sontag. Susan and her sister, Judith, took their stepfather's surname, although he did not adopt them formally. Sontag did not have a religious upbringing and claimed not to have entered a synagogue until her mid-20

All Photography (4)Unreality of Imagery (3)Love (2)Photographers (1)Time (1)Loss (1)Life (1)Adventure (1)That It Looks Real Is Deceiving (1)Archive Fever (1)Historical Records (1)travel (1)heart (1)People (1)Philosophy (1)

From “Vassar Commencement Speech ”

You’ll notice that I haven’t talked about love. Or about happiness. I’ve talked about becoming - or remaining – the person who can be happy, a lot of the time, without thinking that being happy is what it’s all about. It’s not. It’s about becoming the largest, the most inclusive, most responsive…

Happiness Contentment Openness Life

From “Author of "On Photography"”

I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list

Love Photographers travel The eye has to travel Lust For Life

From “The Art of Fiction No. 143”

I write with a felt-tip pen, or sometimes a pencil, on yellow or white legal pads, that fetish of American writers. I like the slowness of writing by hand. Then I type it up and scrawl all over that. And keep on retyping it, each time making corrections both by hand and directly on the typewriter,…

Writing Routines

From “Against Interpretation: And Other Essays”

The ideal or the dream would be to arrive at a language that heals as much as it separates.

Read In Your 20s

From “On Photography”

Surrealism lies at the heart of the photographic enterprise: in the very creation of a duplicate world, of a reality in the second degree, narrower but more dramatic than the one perceived by natural vision.

That It Looks Real Is Deceiving Unreality of Imagery

Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are.

Photography Photos Are Not Reality Unreality of Imagery

All photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.

Preservation as Loss Time Loss Photography

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

Time As Value Creator for Artistic Merit Historical Records Photography

Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality.

Archive Fever Photography Unreality of Imagery

From ““Thinking Against Oneself”

Philosophy becomes tortured thinking. Thinking that devours itself—and continues intact and even flourishes, in spite (or perhaps because) of these repeated acts of self-cannibalism.

Philosophy Thought Critique

From “As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh”

Self-respect. It would make me lovable. And it's the secret to good sex.

Self-Respect Sex

From “In America”

Each of us carries a room within ourselves, waiting to be furnished and peopled, and if you listen closely, you may need to silence everything in your own room, you can hear the sounds of that other room inside your head.

Emptiness Longing Love heart People

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