850 Quotes by Susan Sontag

Being self-conscious. Treating one’s self as an other. Supervising oneself.

I know I’m not myself with people, but am I myself when alone? That seems unlikely, too.

She increases her burden of self-hatred, she behaves destructively with people she loves.

There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys: they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked out the sum for themselves.

In a time hollowed out by decorum, one must school oneself in spontaneity.

With time, many staged photographs turn back into historical evidence, albeit of an impure kind – like most historical evidence.

To describe a phenomenon as a cancer is an incitement to violence. The use of cancer in political discourse encourages fatalism and justifies “severe” measures.

Apocalypse is now a long-running serial: not “Apocalypse Now” but “Apocalypse From Now On.

To say a feeling, an impression is to diminish it – expel it.