Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past.
I have always been full of lust - as I am now - but I have always been placing conceptual obstacles in my own path.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the struggle between one's desires and the mental barriers we create that prevent us from fulfilling them.
In this quote, Susan Sontag discusses the internal conflict between her passionate desires and the conceptual barriers she has erected in her mind that hinder her from embracing those desires fully. It suggests that while the intensity of yearning remains, our thoughts and perceptions can complicate our ability to act on those feelings, hinting at a deeper philosophical exploration of human nature and self-imposed limitations.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a self-help seminar to inspire others to confront and dismantle their limiting beliefs.
More from Susan Sontag
All quotes βScience fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.
Gide and I have attained such perfect intellectual communion that I experience the appropriate labor pains for every thought he gives birth to!
Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.
In NY sensuality completely turns into sexuality - no objects for the senses to respond to, no beautiful river, houses, people. Awful smells of the street, and dirt... Nothing except eating, if that, and the frenzy of the bed.
It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.
Similar quotes
If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
Zen says that if you drop knowledge - and within knowledge everything is included; your name, your identity, everything, because this has been given to you by others - if you drop all that has been given by others, you will have a totally different quality to your being: innocence. This will be a crucifixion of the persona, the personality, and there will be a resurrection of your innocence. You will become a child again, reborn.
I have never been one of those who cares about happiness. Happiness is a strange notion. I am just not made for it. It has never been a goal of mine; I do not think in those terms.
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
The quantity and quality of consciousness, one may say, have always been growing throughout geological times. In this respect man, in whom nervous organisation and therefore psychological powers have attained an undisputed maximum, may be considered, scientifically, as a natural centre of evolution of the primates.
Loss and possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.