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
Lying is an elementary means of self-defense.
Interpretation
Lying can be a basic instinct used to protect oneself from harm or discomfort.
Susan Sontag's quote suggests that lying is sometimes a fundamental, instinctive strategy for self-preservation. In situations where truth may lead to vulnerability or danger, individuals may resort to deception as a defense mechanism to shield themselves from negative repercussions, highlighting the complexities of human behavior and morality.
In practice
In a debate about morality, this quote can illustrate the complexities of honesty.
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.
Science 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.
But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.
To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation.
It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.
Human beings are pattern-seeking animals who will prefer even a bad theory or a conspiracy theory to no theory at all.
Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.
With all the other -isms that we deal with, that sort of nameless -ism that we have in too many of our hearts against the poor in this country is what wounds us most broadly.
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