Quotes from Susan Sontag

I'm often asked if there is something I think writers ought to do, and recently in an interview I heard myself say: "Several things. Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world." Needless to say, no sooner had these perky phrases fallen out of my mouth than I thought of some more recipes for writer's virtue. For instance: "Be serious." By which I meant: Never be cynical. And which doesn't preclude being funny.

La fotografía es, antes que nada, una manera de mirar. No es la mirada misma

Sisyphus, I. I cling to my rock, you don't have to chain me. Stand back! I roll it up—up, up. And … down we go. I knew that would happen. See, I'm on my feet again. See, I'm starting to roll it up again. Don't try to talk me out of it. Nothing, nothing could tear me away from this rock.

Being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country is a quintessential modern experience

el arte es útil, medicinalmente útil, en cuanto suscita y purga emociones peligrosas.

Se spariranno i libri, sparirà la storia, e spariranno anche gli esseri umani ... I libri non sono soltanto la somma arbitraria dei nostri sogni, e la nostra memoria. Ci offrono anche un modello di autotrascendenza. C'è chi pensa che la lettura sia soltanto una forma di evasione: un'evasione dal mondo «reale» di tutti i giorni, verso un mondo immaginario, il mondo dei libri. I libri sono molto di più. Sono una maniera per essere pienamente umani.

El contenido puede haber cambiado. Quizá sea ahora menos figurativo, menos lúcidamente realista. Pero aún se supone que una obra de arte es su contenido. O, como suele afirmarse hoy, que una obra de arte, por definición, dice algo («X dice que...», «X intenta decir que...», «Lo que X dijo...», etcétera, etcétera).

It's not love that the past needs in order to survive, it's an absence of choices.

I took a trip to see the beautiful things. Change of scenery. Change of heart. And do you know? What? They're still there. Ah, but they won't be there for long. I know. That's why I went. To say goodbye. Whenever I travel, it's always to say goodbye.

Ninguno de nosotros podrá recuperar jamás aquella inocencia anterior a toda teoría, cuando el arte no se veía obligado a justificarse

In one of its aspects, art is a technique for focusing attention, for teaching skills of attention. The history of the arts is tantamount to the discovery & formulation of a repertory of objects on which to lavish attention. (Oscar Wilde pointed out that people didn't see fogs before certain nineteenth-century poets & painters taught them how to; & surely, no one saw as much of the variety & subtlety of the human face before the era of the movies.)

and, whatever the jealousies and grievances from the past that have made us wary and cranky with each other, when something like this happens (the sky is falling, the sky is falling!) you understand what's really important.

Cuando deciden la apariencia de una imagen, cuando prefieren una exposición a otra, los fotógrafos siempre imponen pautas a sus modelos. Aunque en un sentido la cámara en efecto captura la realidad, y no solo la interpreta, las fotografías son una interpretación del mundo tanto como las pinturas y los dibujos.

it's so effortless to let my loneliness defeat me, make me mold myself to whatever would (in some way—but not wholly) relieve it. I am infinite—I must never forget it … I want sensuality and sensitivity, both … I was more alive and satisfied with H than I have ever been with anyone else … Let me never deny that … I want to err on the side of violence and excess, rather than to underfill my moments …

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 writing involves a balancing of these incompatible needs.

There does come a point when you have to acknowledge you're no longer postponing something and you really have made a choice.

Sufrir es una cosa; otra es convivir con las imágenes fotográficas del sufrimiento, que no necesariamente fortifican la conciencia ni la capacidad de compasión. También pueden corromperlas. Una vez que se han visto tales imágenes, se recorre la pendiente de ver más. Y más. Las imágenes pasman. Las imágenes anestesian.

No "we" should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people's pain.

There's no changing the way people are. No one changes, everyone knows that.

Reassurances are multiplying in the United States and Western Europe that "the general population" is safe. But "the general population" may be as much a code phrase for whites as it is for heterosexuals. Everyone knows that blacks are getting AIDS in disproportionate numbers, as there is a disproportionate number of blacks in the armed forces and a vastly disproportionate number in prisons.

nature has ceased to be what it always had been—what people needed protection from. Now nature—tamed, endangered, mortal—needs to be protected from people.

Opinions...are agencies of self-immobilization. What writers do should free us up, shake us up. Open up avenues of compassion and new interests. Remind us that we might, just might, aspire to become different, and better, than we are. Remind us that we can change.

From its start, photography implied the capture of the largest possible number of subjects. Painting never had such an imperial scope. The subsequent industrialization of camera technology only carried out a promise inherent in photography from its very beginning: to democratise all experiences by translating them into images.

photographs are a means of making "real" (or "more real") matters that the privileged and the merely safe might prefer to ignore.