Susan Sontag Quotes

How is it possible that in just the last ten years all of these things which were taboo throughout our culture, throughout the culture, things that were taboo are now not only normal but celebrated, and people who were not really supportive of them are called kooks and the new weirdos?

The world is slowly evolving into a place where the things that we have seen as being taboo are starting to open up a bit more.

I think more things are becoming socially acceptable. I think that just by having more media, whether that's TV or Internet, we're able to see more things.

Interracial marriages were basically legalized, but nevertheless, there was a social stigma attached to them for a long time to come. I imagine that's going to be true for same-sex marriages - that people's emotional comfort level with it will not fully materialize for decades.

When I was a kid, and I was odd, the default assumption was that I was odd, not that I was gay. Now when a kid is odd in a Greensburg, gay or straight, the default assumption is gay.

I guess we're living in a pretty sensitive world and there's nothing you can do about that.

When Ellen came out on national television, it was the first time I'd ever seen an LGBT woman represented in such a prominent way.

I don't understand how our story can be so bonkers, but 'Captain Marvel' isn't. A lot of the ideas in 'The OA' that seem outlandish are just normalizing as the years go by.

I think it's true about people now being closer to their parents, since the '60s, really. The parents are no longer from a different planet, the 1950s ideas of American family. We could be friends with our parents. After the '60s, it wasn't like a person smoking pot was what the parents would be appalled at.

Ancient simplicity is gone...the people of today are satisfied with nothing but finery.

It seems to me some people just go around lookin' to get their faith unsettled. That has been the fashion for the last hundred years or so.

I don’t think it’s that controversial. I’m really in favor of legalizing marijuana. I thought people would be more offended by [this series] than they are. I’m surprised they weren’t.

People drift from generation to generation, and the morally unthinkable becomes thinkable as the years move on.

At school he had done things which had formerly seemed to him very horrid and made him feel disgusted with himself when he did them; but when later on he saw that such actions were done by people of good position and that they did not regard them as wrong, he was able not exactly to regard them as right, but to forget about them entirely or not be at all troubled at remembering them.

It is still bad taste to be an avowed atheist. But now it is equally bad taste to be an avowed Christian.

Appearing on the front page of the New York Times even given the state of papers today is still something that's seen by a lot of people.

SAD, BUT ONE DAY OUR KIDS WILL HAVE TO VISIT MUSEUMS TO SEE WHAT A LADY LOOKS LIKE.

I still miss the days when a haircut was just a haircut. It was only your mates you had to face. Now there's a whole industry centred around people analysing your 'look'. I just cannot understand how anyone could get so worked up by... hair.

I think that we need to change the culture, not blame the people that are playing the only game that exists.

No one is saying you're possessed by the devil anymore except the most ignorant of people in modern culture.

I posed for a gay magazine, which caused much comment. But it doesn't bother me. Gay people are fighting the same kind of stereotyping that bodybuilders are: People have certain misconceptions about them just as they do about us.

Nowadays - and I don't want to make some dopey cultural statement here - everyone can be, just by existing in society, because we all have a ship that we follow. Even if it's other people, like on MySpace pages, we're just as collective of enthusiasts now. That seems to be the world we're in.

There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it's now okay to express ourselves publicly. We make that day by doing things publicly until it's simply the way things are.

I remember a time when it was ok to make fun of politicians and powerful people. Now, it's not ok anymore. We've forgotten how to laugh.

The people of your century no longer require the service of composers. A composer is as useful to a person in a jogging suit as a dinsoaur turd in the middle of his runway.