Maxioms by Susan Sontag
Cancer patients are lied to, not just because the disease is (or is thought to be) a death sentence, but read more
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.
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 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.
The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.
The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.
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.
