Susan Sontag

The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. . . . The least energizing emotion read more

The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. . . . The least energizing emotion to write out of is admiration . . . because the basic feeling that goes with admiration is a passive contemplative mood.

Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt.

Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt.

Lying is the most simple form of self-defence. -Susan Sontag.

Lying is the most simple form of self-defence. -Susan Sontag.

It's a pleasure to share one's memories. Everything remembered is dear, endearing, touching, precious. At least the past is safe read more

It's a pleasure to share one's memories. Everything remembered is dear, endearing, touching, precious. At least the past is safe --though we didn't know it at the time. We know it now. Because it's in the past; because we have survived.

The standard that a society should actually embody its own professed principles is a utopian one, in the sense that read more

The standard that a society should actually embody its own professed principles is a utopian one, in the sense that moral principles contradict the way things really are --- and always will be. How things really are --- and always will be --- is neither all-evil nor all-good but deficient, inconsistent, inferior. Principles invite us to do something about the morass of contradictions in which we function morally. Principles invite us to clean up our act; to become intolerant of moral laxity and compromise and cowardice and the turning away from what is upsetting: that secret gnawing of the heart that tells us that what we are doing is not right, and so counsels us that we'd be better off just not thinking about it.