Susan Sontag Quotes

The nice thing about really intelligent people is that when you talk with them they make you feel intelligent too.

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

My retirement was now become solitude; the former is, I believe, the best state for the mind of man, the latter almost the worst. In complete solitude, the eye wants objects, the heart wants attachments, the understanding wants reciprocation. The character loses its tenderness when it has nothing to strengthen it, its sweetness when it has nothing to soothe it.

The only proper intoxication is conversation.

It's really nice to have someone who's intelligent and articulate to talk to about what you're doing, because it's a big part of who we are.

Just when I most needed important conversation, a sniff of the man-wide world, that is, at least one brainy companion who could translate my friendly language into his tongue of undying carnal love, I was forced to lounge in our neighborhood park, surrounded by children.

At 16, I was in Toronto and very shy and not hanging around with anyone who was intellectual in the slightest, so I didn't really have the means to discuss what I was seeing and feeling.

We have for too long been taught that the sight of a man speaking to himself is a sign of eccentricity or madness; we are no longer at all habituated to our own voices, except in conversation or from within the safety of a shouting crowd.

I don't want your vote. I want something more important. I want your commitment to think. Because once you start thinking, I'll get your vote.

I love to meet people; it’s the only fun I have.

We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.

It's not all about looks. If someone can sustain a good intellectual 'conversation, I find that very 'attractive.

I like the ability to engage intellectually with someone. I get so bored so quickly, so if you can't keep me interested, then I'm out.

I have always been very interested in the idea of loneliness and the presumption that romantic relationships are supposed to rid you of that.

I have no wish to talk nonsense." "If you did, it would be in such a grave, quiet manner, I should mistake it for sense.

We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we're designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.

In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life; and if I were forced to choose, I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice. The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up.

Every human being is in need of talking to somebody. In this country nobody has time. It seems that talking to a friend has gone out of style. Now you have to pay money to go to an analyst.

I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don't know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness. In reality those who satisfy me are those who simply allow me to live with my ''idea of them.

Even in this world where you’re getting everything you need and having this nice life, there’s still loneliness and longing and disconnection.

Not just any talk is conversation; not any talk raises consciousness. Good conversation has an edge: it opens your eyes to something, quickens your ears. And good conversation reverberates: it keeps on talking in your mind later in the day; the next day, you find yourself still conversing with what was said. That reverberation afterward is the very raising of consciousness; your mind's been moved. You are at another level with your reflections.

Skillful listening is the best remedy for loneliness, loquaciousness, and laryngitis.

A man needed somebody. There wasn't anybody around, so you had to make up somebody, make him up to be like a man should be. It wasn't make-believe or cheating. The other way was make-believe and cheating: living your life without a man like him around.

I don't remember ever feeling lonely; in fact, on the rare occasions when I met other children I found their games and their talk far less interesting than the adventures and dialogues I read in my books.