Susan Sontag Quotes

I'm interested in all kinds of art. I draw and paint and don't know how to play the banjo, but I do play the banjo.

It is the addition of strangeness to beauty that constitutes the romantic character in art.

All men are somewhat ridiculous and grotesque, just because they are men; and in this respect artists might well be regarded as man multiplied by two. So it is, was, and shall be.

Acting is a very limited form of expression and those who take it seriously are very limited people. I take it seriously.

Art is too serious to be taken seriously.

In the final analysis, style is art. And art is nothing more or less than various modes of stylized, dehumanized representation.

That's what people forget about, is that when things are very, very powerful in a sad way, they have that possibility of also being over-the-top, hysterically funny.

Often when you're working on dark material, the atmosphere is fun.

I think there's art, and then there's illustration. Art comes from a deeper place.

Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflected the landscape. And yet ... and yet ... Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things you might think they would want to escape from - hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in. He was fascinated.

Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.

I was the toast of two continents: Greenland and Australia.

The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.

One of the most striking aspects of abstract art's appearance is her nakedness, an art stripped bare.

Recovering from suffering is not like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different. They crash through the logic of individual utility and behave paradoxically. Instead of recoiling from the sorts of loving commitments that almost always involve suffering, they throw themselves more deeply into them. Even while experiencing the worst and most lacerating consequences, some people double down on vulnerability. They hurl themselves deeper and gratefully into their art, loved ones and commitments.

What you think is fake in your head comes off as not enough on camera, a lot of times. You almost have to overdo it, in this overly, sort of Broadway, large-gestures kind of way to come off as being realistic on camera. It's strange. You almost have to act really fake to come off looking real.

I suspect that the word (art) was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.

A work should convey its entire meaning by itself, imposing it on the spectator even before he knows what the subject is.

Ironic philosophies produce passionate works.

All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don't want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don't think art should be escapist. That's a waste of time.

All great art and literature is propaganda.

We're creating multiple personas. We're creating a thespian sense of personality where we see ourselves as works of art, and we see everything in our environment as a prop, as a set, as a stage, as a backdrop for filling ourselves in. We don't see ourselves as ever completed. We are in-formation.

Some people flinch when you talk about art in the context of the needs of society thinking you are introducing something far too common for a discussion of art. Why should art have a purpose and a use? Art shouldn't be concerned with purpose and reason and need, they say. These are improper. But from the very beginning, it seems to me, stories have indeed been meant to be enjoyed, to appeal to that part of us which enjoys good form and good shape and good sound.

I hate taking myself seriously. It drives me crazy!

A work of art is an exaggeration.