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[m]ilitary Metaphors Have More And More Come To Infuse All Aspects Of The Description Of The Medical Situation. Disease Is Seen As An Invasion Of Alien Organisms, To Which The Body Responds By Its Own Military Operations, Such As The Mobilizing Of Immunological "defenses", And Medicine Is "aggressive" As In The Language Of Most Chemotherapies.

-Susan Sontag

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[m]ilitary Metaphors Have More

Susan Sontag

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[m]ilitary Metaphors Have More And More Come To Infuse All Aspects Of The Description Of The Medical Situation. Disease Is Seen As An Invasion Of Alien Organisms, To Which The Body Responds By Its Own Military Operations, Such As The Mobilizing Of Immunological "defenses", And Medicine Is "aggressive" As In The Language Of Most Chemotherapies.

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To Me, Literature Is A Calling, Even A Kind Of Salvation. It Connects Me With An Enterprise That Is Over 2,000 Years Old. What Do We Have From The Past? Art And Thought. That’s What Lasts. That’s What Continues To Feed People And Give Them An Idea Of Something Better.

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Writing Is A Little Door. Some Fantasies, Like Big Pieces Of Furniture, Won’t Come Through.

In Photographing Dwarfs, You Don't Get Majesty & Beauty. You Get Dwarfs.

I Certainly Identify Myself As A Feminist.

I Was Fascinated By Quotations And Lists. And Then I Noticed That Other People Were Fascinated By Quotations And Lists: People As Different As Borges And Walter Benjamin, Novalis And Godard.

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I Didn't Think Of Myself As Importing, I Thought It Was More Interesting To Write About Things People Didn't Know About Than What They Did. When I Became Aware That I Was In Fact "importing", I Stopped Doing It.

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The Way In Which A Certain Kind Of Political Idealism Has Been Discredited And Scorned Makes The Danger Not That Intellectuals Keep On Making Fools Of Themselves, Formulating Political Opinions When They Might Not Be As Informed As They Might Be, But That They Retreat And Leave Politics To The Professionals.

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There Is An Understandable Vindictiveness In People Who Come From Communist Countries. They Want To Keep Telling Us That We Were Fools To Think That We Could Make Radical Changes In Our Society. Though I Understand Their Dismay, Respect Their Suffering And Don't Understand The Gullibility Of Some People Who Don't Take In How Repressive These Societies Are, I Still Think It's Important To Keep People Of All Kinds As Active In Civic Matters As Possible.

Norman Mailer Records In His Recent Essays And Public Appearances His Perfecting Of Himself As A Virile Instrument Of Letters; He Is Perpetually In Training, Getting Ready To Launch Himself From His Own Missile Pad Into A High, Beautiful Orbit; Even His Failures May Yet Be Turned To Successes.

What Pornographic Literature Does Is Precisely To Drive A Wedge Between One's Existence As A Sexual Being - While In Ordinary Life A Healthy Person Is One Who Prevents Such A Gap From Opening Up

One Can Be Serious About The Frivolous, Frivolous About The Serious.

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Life Is Not Significant Details, Illuminated By A Flash, Fixed Forever. Photographs Are.

How Boring Just To Be A Body.

I Want To Live As Long As Possible, Just To See How Stupid It Gets.

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I Am Profoundly Uncertain How To Write. I Know What I Love And What I Like, Because It's A Direct Passionate Response. But When I Write, I'm Very Uncertain Whether It's Good Enough. That Is, Of Course, The Writer's Agony.

The Unit Of The Poet Is The Word, The Unit Of The Prose Writer Is The Sentence.

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Most Of My Reading Is Rereading.

All Photographs Aspire To The Condition Of Being Memorable - That Is, Unforgettable.

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Life Is A Movie; Death Is A Photograph.

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Use It Or Lose It

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We Are Ruled By Quotations.

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There Is An Aggression Implicit In Every Use Of The Camera.

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Photographs Are A Way Of Imprisoning Reality, Understood As Recalcitrant, Inaccessible; Of Making It Stand Still. Or They Enlarge A Reality That Is Felt To Be Shrunk, Hollowed Out, Perishable, Remote. One Can't Possess Reality, One Can Possess (and Be Possessed By) Images.

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Travel Becomes A Strategy For Accumulating Photographs.

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I Believe That Courage Is Morally Neutral. I Can Well Imagine Wicked People Being Brave And Good People Being Timid Or Afraid. I Don't Consider It A Moral Virtue.

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A Photograph Comes Into Being, As It Is Seen, All At Once.

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What Seems Distinctively Modern As A Unit Of Thought, Of Art, Of Discourse Is The Fragment; And The Quotation Is One Kind Of Fragment.

Just As A Camera Is A Sublimation Of The Gun, To Photograph Someone Is A Subliminal Murder - A Soft Murder, Appropriate To A Sad, Frightened Time.

The Last Sentence Of A Book Is, Of Course, Where You Have To Stop.

As Photographs Give People An Imaginary Possession Of A Past That Is Unreal, They Also Help People To Take Possession Of Space In Which They Are Insecure.

Time May Enhance What Seems Simply Dogged Or Lacking In Fantasy Now Because We Are Too Close To It, Because It Resembles Too Closely Our Own Everyday Fantasies, The Fantastic Nature Of Which We Don't Perceive. We Are Better Able To Enjoy A Fantasy As A Fantasy When It Is Not Our Own.

Today Everything Exists To End In A Photograph.

To Paraphrase Several Sages: Nobody Can Think And Hit Someone At The Same Time.

I Do Not Think White America Is Committed To Granting Equality To The American Negro... This Is A Passionately Racist Country; It Will Continue To Be So In The Foreseeable Future.

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Our Appreciations, It Was Felt, Could Be So Much More Inclusive If We Said That Something, Instead Of Being Beautiful, Was 'interesting'.

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One Can Never Ask Anyone To Change A Feeling.

In Good Films, There Is Always A Directness That Entirely Frees Us From The Itch To Interpret.

I Belong Rather To A More Classical Tradition Of Social Analysis.

A Personality Is Our Way Of Being For Others. We Hope That Others Will Meet Us Half Way Or More, Gratify Our Needs, Be Our Audience, Soothe Our Fears.

In The Twentieth Century, The Repellent, Harrowing Disease That Is Made The Index Of A Superior Sensitivity, The Vehicle Of "spiritual" Feelings And "critical" Discontent, Is Insanity.

You Know That You Can't Make References To The Classics Any Longer And Less And Less To The English Classics Even.

Photographs Shock Insofar As They Show Something Novel.

I'm Only Interested In People Engaged In A Project Of Self-transformation.

In Ny Sensuality Completely Turns Into Sexuality - No Objects For The Senses To Respond To, No Beautiful River, Houses, People. Awful Smells Of The Street, And Dirt... Nothing Except Eating, If That, And The Frenzy Of The Bed.

Photography Is, First Of All, A Way Of Seeing.

Cancer Patients Are Lied To, Not Just Because The Disease Is (or Is Thought To Be) A Death Sentence, But Because It Is Felt To Be Obscene - In The Original Meaning Of That Word: Ill-omened, Abominable, Repugnant To The Senses.

The Possession Of A Camera Can Inspire Something Akin To Lust. And Like All Credible Forms Of Lust, It Cannot Be Satisfied.

The Only Story That Seems Worth Writing Is A Cry, A Shot, A Scream. A Story Should Break The Reader's Heart.

The Traditional Metaphor For A Spiritual Investigation Is That Of The Voyage Or The Journey. From This Image I Must Dissociate Myself. I Do Not Consider Myself A Voyager, I Have Preferred To Stand Still.

Taste Has No System And No Proofs.

Cancer Is A Demonic Pregnancy.

To Emphasize Style Is To Slight Content, Or To Introduce An Attitude Which Is Neutral With Respect To Content.

Instead Of Just Recording Reality, Photographs Have Become The Norm For The Way Things Appear To Us, Thereby Changing The Very Idea Of Reality And Of Realism.

Everyone Who Is Born Holds Dual Citizenship, In The Kingdom Of The Well And In The Kingdom Of The Sick. Although We All Prefer To Use Only The Good Passport, Sooner Or Later Each Of Us Is Obliged, At Least For A Spell, To Identify Ourselves As Citizens Of That Other Place.

With More People, There Are More Voices To Tune Out.

As Industrialization Provided Social Uses For The Operations Of The Photographer, So The Reaction Against These Uses Reinforced The Self-consciousness Of Photography-as-art.

In America, The Photographer Is Not Simply The Person Who Records The Past, But The One Who Invents It.

One Man Thinks Before He Acts. Another Man Thinks After He Acts. Each Is Of The Opinon That The Other Thinks Too Much.

One Doesn't Need To Know The Artist's Private Intentions. The Work Tells All.

You Can Include Essay Elements In Fiction; This Is A Very Nineteenth Century Practice.

One Cannot Use The Life To Interpret The Work. But One Can Use The Work To Interpret The Life.

Illness Is The Night-side Of Life, A More Onerous Citizenship. Everyone Who Is Born Holds Dual Citizenship, In The Kingdom Of The Well And In The Kingdom Of The Sick.

A Good Book Is An Education Of The Heart.

With The Modern Diseases (once Tb, Now Cancer) The Romantic Idea That The Disease Expresses The Character Is Invariably Extended To Assert That The Character Causes The Disease -- Because It Has Not Expressed Itself. Passion Moves Inward, Striking And Blighting The Deepest Cellular Recesses.

Aids Obliges People To Think Of Sex As Having, Possibly, The Direst Consequences: Suicide. Or Murder.

Everything Has Changed And Nothing Is Changed.

Things Have Changed

Everything Should Be Understood, And Anything Can Be Transformed - That Is The Modern View.

The Painter Constructs, The Photographer Discloses.

Like The Collector, The Photographer Is Animated By A Passion That, Even When It Appears To Be For The Present, Is Linked To A Sense Of The Past.

It Is Easier To Endure Than To Change. But Once One Has Changed, What Was Endured Is Hard To Recall.

I'm Extremely Interested In The Russian Formalists And Have Been For Many Years. I'm More Drawn To Their Writing, Which Is Expressive And Literary, Than To Writing Which Is Extremely Academic Or Jargon-ridden.

That's What A Community Is: Taking For Granted Certain Assumptions, Not Having To Start From Zero Every Time. This Is No Longer True.

When Something Is Just Bad, It's Often Because It Is Too Mediocre In Its Ambition. The Artist Hasn't Attempted To Do Anything Really Outlandish.

The Problems Of This World Are Only Truly Solved In Two Ways: By Extinction Or Duplication.

Images Anesthetize. An Event Known Through Photographs Certainly Becomes More Real Than It Would Have Been If One Had Never Seen The Photographs ... But After Repeated Exposure To Images It Also Becomes Less Real. ... 'concerned' Photography Has Done At Least As Much To Deaden Conscience As To Arouse It.

The Ideology Of Capitalism Makes Us All Into Connoisseurs Of Liberty - Of The Indefinite Expansion Of Possibility.

You Can Go Into All Sorts Of Situations With A Camera And People Will Think They Should Serve It.

Although Photography Generates Works That Can Be Called Art-it Requires Subjectivity, It Can Lie, It Gives Aesthetic Pleasure-photography Is Not, To Begin With, An Art Form At All. Like Language, It Is A Medium In Which Works Of Art (among Other Things) Are Made.

If An Irreducible Distinction Between Theatre And Cinema Does Exist, It May Be This: Theatre Is Confined To A Logical Or Continuous Use Of Space. Cinemahas Access To An Alogical Or Discontinuous Use Of Space.

When You See Your 40-page Essay Turned Into A "hot Tip" In One Paragraph In Newsweek, You Get Anxious About The Way Your Writing Has Been Used.

The Purpose Of Art Is Always, Ultimately, To Give Pleasure - Though Our Sensibilities May Take Time To Catch Up With The Forms Of Pleasure That Art In A Given Time May Offer.

The Destiny Of Photography Has Taken It Far Beyond The Role To Which It Was Originally Thought To Be Limited: To Give More Accurate Reports On Reality (including Works Of Art). Photography Is The Reality; The Real Object Is Often Experienced As A Letdown.

In The Journal I Do Not Just Express Myself More Openly Than I Could To Any Person; I Create Myself.

Keeping A Journal

The Fear Of Becoming Old Is Born Of The Recognition That One Is Not Living Now The Life That One Wishes.

A Writer, I Think, Is Someone Who Pays Attention To The World.

Illnesses Have Always Been Used As Metaphors To Enliven Charges That A Society Was Corrupt Or Unjust.

Perversity Is The Muse Of Modern Literature.

The Basic Unit For Contemporary Art Is Not The Idea, But The Analysis Of And Extension Of Sensations.

The Photographer's Intentions Do Not Determine The Meaning Of A Photograph, Which Will Have Its Own Career, Blown By The Whims And Loyalties Of The Diverse Communities That Have Use For It.

The Easiest Thing In The World For Me Is To Pay Attention.

The Solution To A Problem - A Story That You Are Unable To Finish - Is The Problem. It Isn't As If The Problem Is One Thing And The Solution Something Else. The Problem, Properly Understood = The Solution. Instead Of Trying To Hide Or Efface What Limits The Story, Capitalize On That Very Limitation. State It, Rail Against It.

There Is A Great Deal That Either Has To Be Given Up Or Be Taken Away From You If You Are Going To Succeed In Writing A Body Of Work.

The Writer Is Either A Practicing Recluse Or A Delinquent, Guilt-ridden One--or Both. Usually Both.

Love Is Friendship On Fire -- Anonymous

It Is Not Suffering As Such That Is Most Deeply Feared But Suffering That Degrades.

World Suffering

Painters And Sculptors Under The Nazis Often Depicted The Nude, But They Were Forbidden To Show Any Bodily Imperfections. Their Nudes Look Like Pictures In Physique Magazines: Pinups Which Are Both Sanctimoniously Asexual And (in A Technical Sense) Pornographic, For They Have The Perfection Of A Fantasy.

Writing Is A Mysterious Activity.

... One Of Art Photography's Most Vigorous Enterprises--[is] Concentrating On Victims, On The Unfortunate--but Without The Compassionate Purpose That Such A Project Is Expected To Serve.

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 Of The Pressures On Women Which I Was Lucky Enough To Have Escaped, Perhaps Because Of My Eccentricity Or The Oddness Of My Upbringing.

Kindness, Kindness, Kindness. I Want To Make A New Year's Prayer, Not A Resolution. I'm Praying For Courage.

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My Urge To Write Is An Urge Not To Self-expressionism But To Self-transcendence. My Work Is Both Bigger And Smaller Than I Am.

Most Writers I Know Have Switched To Word Processors. I Haven't But I'm Very Curious About Why People Like It So Much. I Think It Has Something To Do With The Fact That At Last Writing, Which Has Been Such An Old-fashioned, Artisanal Activity, Even On A Typewriter, Has Now Entered The Central Domain Of Modern Experience Which Is That Of Making Copies, Being Involved In The World Of Duplicates And Machine-mediated Activities.

The Quote Is Always Fascinating Because It Changes Out Of Context, Becomes Different And Sometimes More Mysterious. It Has A Directness And Assertiveness It May Not Have Had In The Original. I Think The Quality Of Inaccessibility, The Mystery, Is Important - That Whatever Matters Can't Be Taken In On Just One Reading Or One Seeing. This Is Certainly A Quality Of The Little Of Art That Lasts.

Currently Intellectuals In Western Europe And North America Are Extremely Demoralized And Shaken By The Rise Of A Virulent Conservative Tendency (which Some Have Even Joined).

Detachment Is The Prerogative Of An Elite; And As The Dandy Is The Nineteenth Century's Surrogate For The Aristocrat In Matters Ofculture, So Camp Is The Modern Dandyism. Camp Is The Answer To The Problem: How To Be A Dandy In The Age Of Mass Culture.

It's Not That You Make Up Your Ideas To Justify Your Temperament But That It's The Temperament First.

10 Percent Of Any Population Is Cruel, No Matter What, And 10 Percent Is Merciful, No Matter What, And The Remaining 80 Percent Can Be Moved In Either Direction.

Each Generation Has To Reinvent Spirituality.

I Have Always Been Full Of Lust - As I Am Now - But I Have Always Been Placing Conceptual Obstacles In My Own Path.

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