Susan Sontag Quotes

I feel like we want to compartmentalise things and say, 'Well, that's emotional, artistic and subjective, while this is intellectual, objective and measured.' I have difficulty thinking that's the way we experience things.

Art is so subjective, and people can react however they want.

The singular point of beautiful objects, and people, is that they are experienced not as parts, or ratios between cheekbones and chin, but as wholes. The experience of beauty is a perception, but it is one that mixes up various other sensations and makes them converge in a particular way.

The truth is that art does not teach; it makes you feel, and any teaching that may arise from the feeling is an extra, and must not be stressed too much. In the modern world, and in Canada as much as anywhere, we are obsessed with the notion that to think is the highest achievement of mankind, but we neglect the fact that thought untouched by feeling is thin, delusive, treacherous stuff.

When I go to an art gallery and stand in front of a painting, I don't want someone telling me what I should be seeing or thinking; I want to feel whatever I feel, see whatever I see, and figure out what I figure out.

My father was a world-class scientist and my mother was a prolific painter. I could see that my parents had completely different ways of knowing and understanding the world, and relating to it. My father approached things through scientific inquiry and exploration, while my mother experienced things through her emotions and senses.

The most powerful part of the art is experiential, yet it's the hardest to describe because it's nonverbal.

A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?

I think writers like to see how people bring their words to life, and it's always surprising. Always, no matter what, whether it's good or bad, it's always surprising because a whole human being is coming to that piece of writing.

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it.

While I recognize the necessity for a basis of observed reality... true art lies in a reality that is felt.

Music's something you feel. You have to feel it first before you hear it.

Every viewer is going to get a different thing. That's the thing about painting, photography, cinema.

When we talk about music, we talk about our reaction to it. One person might say that music is so poetic, while another says it's all mathematics. Yet another might say it's about sensuality, and so on. That's all true. But music is not just one of these things. It's everything all at once.

You don't have to know anything about art to appreciate it or to look at it. There aren't any hidden secrets or things that you're supposed to understand.

Music is very abstract. When we talk about music, we're not discussing the music itself but rather how we react to it.

I love to zoom in and study why a chord is making me feel a certain way, but then I've learnt to zoom out again. Because if I'm not actually feeling it, there's not much point making it in the first place.

I can only be instinctive in my reaction to Shakespeare.

I like to write a piece of music that reflects how I felt about a film as opposed to, here's this action scene; here's this set piece.

The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.

The arts objectify subjective reality, and subjectify outward experience of nature. Art education is the education of feeling, and a society that neglects it gives itself up to formless emotion. Bad art is corruption of feeling.

Telling someone about what a symbol means is like telling someone how music should make them feel.

Love is art, not truth. It’s like painting scenery.

I cannot articulate enough to express my dislike to people who think that understanding spoils your experience... How would they know?

Sometimes good art jumps out at me; most of the time I see bad art, or see nothing at all and just drift, feeling weird, pretending to be fine.