“The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
“The best criticism, and it is uncommon, is of this sort that dissolves considerations of content into those of form.” — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility. — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
Transparence is the highest, most liberating value in art - and in criticism - today. Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
A lot of what I've written in criticism of my lust for virtue - my discovery that I've committed idolatry, making of… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
“Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
“This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
the appetite for thinking must be regulated, as all sensible people know, for it may stifle one's life. — Susan Sontag Copy Share
Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person - is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or… — Susan Sontag Copy Share
Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a… — Susan Sontag Copy Share
Anthropology has always struggled with an intense, fascinated repulsion towards its subject… [The anthropologist] submits himself to the exotic to confirm his own inner… — Susan Sontag Copy Share
“Why not eliminate schooling between age 12-16? It’s biologically + psychologically too turbulent a time to be cooped up inside, made to sit all… — Susan Sontag Copy Share
To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never… — Susan Sontag Copy Share
One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves. The very working of this… — Susan Sontag Copy Share
Currently intellectuals in Western Europe and North America are extremely demoralized and shaken by the rise of a virulent conservative tendency (which some have… — Susan Sontag Copy Share
With the modern diseases (once TB, now cancer) the romantic idea that the disease expresses the character is invariably extended to assert that the… — Susan Sontag Copy Share
As objects of contemplation, images of the atrocious can answer to several different needs. To steel oneself against weakness. To make oneself more numb.… — Susan Sontag Copy Share
The creative phase of an idea coincides with the period during which it insists, cantankerously, on its boundaries, on what makes it different; but… — Susan Sontag Copy Share
Photographs objectify: they turn an event or a person into something that can be possessed. — Susan Sontag Copy Share
The feminist movement has been important to me because it's made me feel less odd and also because it has made me understand some… — Susan Sontag Copy Share
