Quote #64

The writer in me distrusts the good citizen, the 'intellectual ambassador,' the human rights activist - those roles which are mentioned in the citation for this prize, much as I am committed to them. The writer is more skeptical, more self-doubting, than the person who tries to do (and to support) the right thing.

More from Susan Sontag

  1. We are told we must choose - the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is a life if not a series of negotiations between the o…
  2. Literature is dialogue; responsiveness. Literature might be described as the history of human responsiveness to what is alive and what is m…
  3. 'Old' and 'new' are the perennial poles of all feeling and sense of orientation in the world. We cannot do without the old, because in what…
  4. A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness huma…
  5. The United States is a generically religious society. That is, in the United States it's not important which religion you adhere to, as lon…
  6. To have access to literature, world literature, was to escape the prison of national vanity, of philistinism, of compulsory provincialism, …
  7. Americans are constantly extolling 'traditions'; litanies to family values are at the center of every politician's discourse. And yet the c…
  8. Styles change, style doesn't.

All Susan Sontag quotes