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.
Susan SontagRead
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
DesiresBarriersSelf-ImposedPhilosophyPassion
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.
Susan SontagRead
Gide and I have attained such perfect intellectual communion that I experience the appropriate labor pains for every thought he gives birth to!
Susan SontagRead
Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.
Susan SontagRead
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.
Susan SontagRead
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.
Susan SontagRead
Similar quotes
If you live in free countries, you don't have to spend all your life arguing about freedom because it is all around you. It seems redundant to make a lot of noise about something when, in fact, there it is. But if someone tries to remove it, it becomes important for you to formulate your own defenses of it.
Salman RushdieRead
Introspection, or 'sitting in the silence,' is an unscientific way of trying to force apart the mind and senses, tied together by the life force. The contemplative mind, attempting its return to divinity, is constantly dragged back toward the senses by the life currents.
Paramahansa YoganandaRead
Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.
W. Somerset MaughamRead
Not to think of yourself / as someone who did not count -- / Festival of the Souls.
Matsuo BashoRead
Between the vision and the act lies the shadow.
T. S. EliotRead
The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.
Georges BernanosRead