Susan Sontag Quotes

A person's shadow stood for his legacy, his impact on the world. Some people cast hardly any shadow at all. Some cast long, deep shadows that endured for centuries.

It took me a long time to understand not to get caught up in other people's expectations. It really comes down to creative fulfillment. It took me a while to realize I don't want to just be on a show to be on a show.

There's a quote from Hamlet that is my guide... He tells the players not to exaggerate but to hold a mirror up to nature. Don't overdo it, don't underdo it. Do it just on the line.

The beauty of reality-based art - art underwritten by reality hunger - is that it's perfectly situated between life itself and (unattainable) "life as art".

When you don't talk down to your audience, then they can grow with you. I give them a lot of credit to be able to hang with me this long, because I've gone through a lot of changes, but they've allowed me to grow, and thus we can tackle some serious subjects and try to just be better human beings, all of us.

No one can long hide behind a mask; the pretense soon lapses into the true character.

You were the living image of the entire Platonic shadow show, an illusion that could fill my emptiness with marvellous, imaginary things as long as, just as long as, the movie lasted, and then all would all vanish.

To the untrue man, the whole universe is false- it is impalpable- it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself is in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.

He's brilliant. At first, I thought, 'Oh, is he going to be Hollywood stud-like?' But he's a really kind, wonderful person. He said to me one day early in the making of the movie, 'You know, I was kind of worried about you'. He thought I was going to be a perfect skin, which I am certainly not. It didn't take long for Leo to crack and see who I really am, and we became very close. but, I must say, he is absolutely gorgeous.

A man who casts no shadow isn't really a man at all.

I'm not very interesting. Birds are interesting. I could stand there lip-synching all day long, but it would feel funny, and people would be able to tell. I'm not a good actress.

My passport photo is one of the most remarkable photographs I have ever seen- no retouching, no shadows, no flattery-just stark me.

The man who has his ideals, no matter how thoroughly he may be persuaded to desert them, survives well only so long as he is true to those ideals.

Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.

There are some who go through life with a shadow hanging over them, particularly if they live in a building which has long wide awnings.

The sophisticated concern about art sinks before a spontaneous love of reality, and I thank the photograph for being so transparent a vehicle for things.

It's important to be yourself. What art does for everyone, helps you understand yourself and in a distilled way, whether it's a painting or a scene in acting or a joke. It distills something about everyday life that can be important to you.

Every Gag I tell must be based on truth. No matter how much I may exaggerate it, it must have a certain amount of Truth.... Now Rumor travels Faster, but it don't stay put as long as Truth.

That was my goal in portraying Jesse Owens: bringing that level of humanity so people could understand who he was as a person.

Photography knows how to authenticate its misrepresentations.

I believe the man who will go down in posterity is the man who paints his own time and the scenes of everyday life around him.

I like to see people reaching back for the roots and for the reason why. Not intellectually, but just for the gut feeling of what it's all about.

In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies.

As long as you want to please everyone, you won't please anyone.

Sometimes when I am in a situation that I have never been in, I kind of pull back a little bit to observe things; it doesn't really last long though I have to. I've resigned to myself to the fact that I have to be me.