The unit of the poet is the word, the unit of the prose writer is the sentence. — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
Writing is finally a series of permissions you give yourself to be expressive in certain ways. To leap. To fly. To fail. — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
“A writer is first of all a reader. It is from reading that I derive the standards by which I measure my… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
It's beginnings that are hard. I always begin with a great sense of dread and trepidation. Nietzsche says that the decision to… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
Salter is a writer who particularly rewards those for whom reading is an intense pleasure. He is among the very few North… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
When you see your 40-page essay turned into a "hot tip" in one paragraph in Newsweek, you get anxious about the way… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
In a lot of writing or intellectual discourse we're starting to use that model: "Oh, this is where it comes from!" I… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
The writer must be four people: 1) The nut, the obsede 2) The moron 3) The stylist 4) The critic. 1 supplies… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
We live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
If I thought that what I'm doing when I write is expressing myself, I'd junk the typewriter. Writing is a much more… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
I don't write easily or rapidly. My first draft usually has only a few elements worth keeping. I have to find what… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
That sort of reception - where everything is assimilated to the world of celebrity - makes me dream of becoming a more… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
I write essays first because I have a passionate relationship to the subject and second because the subject is one that people… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
I am profoundly uncertain how to write. I know what I love and what I like, because it's a direct passionate response.… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
“A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world." [ Speech upon being awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself? It's far more interesting to write… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
“There is only so much revealing one can do. For every self-revelation, there has to be a self-concealment. A life-long commitment to… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
When you are writing, you are - from society's point of view - only producing the first version which will then be… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
In contrast to the written account-which, depending on its complexity of thought, reference, and vocabulary, is pitched at a larger or smaller… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
There is a great deal that either has to be given up or be taken away from you if you are going… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. The least energizing emotion to write out of is… — Susan Sontag Copy Share Image
I didn't think of myself as importing, I thought it was more interesting to write about things people didn't know about than… — 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
![“A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world." [ Speech upon being awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (Peace Prize of the German Book Trade) , Frankfurt Book Fair, October 12, 2003]” quote by Susan Sontag](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/2d2/susan-sontag-332_attention_a-writer-i-think-is-someone-who-pays-att_1258443.jpg)
