850 Quotes by Susan Sontag

Ideas disturb the levelness of life.

The truth of history crowds out the truth of fiction – as if one were obliged to choose between them...

To be sure, nobody who really thinks about history can take politics altogether seriously.

Like a car, a camera is sold as a predatory weapon – one that’s as automated as possible, ready to spring. Popular taste expects an easy, an invisible technology.

Decline of the letter, the rise of the notebook! One doesn’t write to others any more; one writes to oneself.

Photographs that depict suffering shouldn’t be beautiful, as captions shouldn’t moralize.

Opinions are like some kind of crust that grows on top of things and you want to kind of peel them off.

In NY sensuality completely turns into sexuality – no objects for the senses to respond to, no beautiful river, houses, people. Awful smells of the street, and dirt... Nothing except eating, if that, and the frenzy of the bed.

Everything was simple, physical, painful, exalting. The world consisted of the four elements – land and water, firepower and distancing air.