"Camp is art that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is 'too much."
Read quote
5 likes
Quote collection
Susan Sontag quotes (page 15 of 27)
540 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The history of art is a sequence of successful transgressions."
Read quote
5 likes
"Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described."
Read quote
5 likes
"whatever doesn't kill you leaves scars."
Read quote
4 likes
"Marriage is a sort of tacit hunting in couples. The world all in couples, each couple in its own little house, watching its own little interests and stewing in its own little privacy - it's the most repulsive thing in the world. One's got to get rid of the exclusiveness of married love."
Read quote
4 likes
"All photographs aspire to the condition of being memorable - that is, unforgettable."
Read quote
4 likes
"It's hard not to be afraid. Be less afraid."
Read quote
4 likes
"We are told we must choose - the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is a life if not a series of negotiations between the old and the new?"
Read quote
4 likes
"We live in a world of copies and we're fascinated when we encounter the originals (in a museum, for instance)."
Read quote
4 likes
"When we're afraid we shoot. But when we're nostalgic we take pictures."
Read quote
4 likes
"Etymologically, 'patient' means sufferer."
Read quote
4 likes
"The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed."
Read quote
4 likes
"Sight is a promiscuous sense. The avid gaze always wants more."
Read quote
4 likes
"Images are more real than anyone could have supposed."
Read quote
4 likes
"American energy. . . is the energy of violence, of free-floating resentment and anxiety unleashed by chronic cultural dislocations which must be, for the most part, ferociously sublimated. This energy has mainly been sublimated into crude materialism"
Read quote
4 likes
"Each generation has to reinvent spirituality."
Read quote
4 likes
"Translation is the circulatory system of the world's literatures"
Read quote
4 likes
"The principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own legally recognized borders."
Read quote
4 likes
"Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images — as, according to Proust, most ambitious of voluntary prisoners, one can't possess the present but one can possessthe past."
Read quote
4 likes
"As one passion begins to fail it is necessary to form another, for the whole art of going through life tolerably is to keep oneself eager about anything."
Read quote
4 likes