Susan Sontag Quotes

United States, Writer
January 16, 1933 – December, 28, 2004.

Susan Sontag was an American writer, filmmaker, philosopher, teacher, and political activist. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; 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.

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.

Susan Sontag
Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras.

Susan Sontag
- Reality
- Camera
- Seem

Not all violence is equally reprehensible; not all wars are equally unjust.

Susan Sontag
- Violence
- Wars
- Unjust
The particular qualities and intentions of photographs tend to be swallowed up in the generalized pathos of time past.

Susan Sontag
The white race is the cancer of human history.

Susan Sontag
- History
- Cancer
- Race
Literature is dialogue; responsiveness.

Susan Sontag
I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them.

Susan Sontag
- Attention
- Envy
- Paranoid
I guess I think I'm writing for people who are smarter than I am, because then I'll be doing something that's worth their time.

Susan Sontag
- Time
- Writing
- Worth

I don't want to express alienation. It isn't what I feel. I'm interested in various kinds of passionate engagement. All my work says be serious, be passionate, wake up.

Susan Sontag
- Work
- Serious
- Passionate
A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.

Susan Sontag
- World
- Attention
- Writer
Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility.

Susan Sontag
It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades.

Susan Sontag
- Fear
- Suffering
- Degrades
The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public.

Susan Sontag
- Public
- Follow
- Voices