Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt. – Susan Sontag
We live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large rations by the popular arts, which allows most people to cope with these twin specters. – Susan Sontag
The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art – and, by analogy, our own experience – more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means. – Susan Sontag
AIDS obliges people to think of sex as having, possibly, the direst consequences: suicide. Or murder. – Susan Sontag
When a mans life is destroyed or damaged by some wound or privation of soul or body, which is due to other mens actions or negligence, it is not only his sensibility that suffers but also his aspiration toward the good. Therefore there has been sacrilege towards that which is sacred in him. – Simone Weil
The troubles of the young are soon over; they leave no external mark. If you wound the tree in its youth the bark will quickly cover the gash; but when the tree is very old, peeling the bark off, and looking carefully, you will see the scar there still. All that is buried is not dead. – Olive Schreiner