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.
Gide and I have attained such perfect intellectual communion that I experience the appropriate labor pains for every thought he gives birth to!
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses the deep intellectual connection and shared creativity between Susan Sontag and Gide.
In this quote, Susan Sontag reflects on the profound bond she shares with Gide, describing it as a perfect intellectual communion. She suggests that their relationship goes beyond mere dialogue; it is a collaborative intellectual partnership where she feels a deep emotional and mental engagement, akin to experiencing the labor pains associated with the birth of new thoughts and ideas, revealing the intensity and significance of their connection.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can inspire students in a literature class to appreciate the depth of intellectual connections in collaborative work.
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.
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.
Conventions vs. spontaneity. This is a dialectical choice, it depends on the assessment you make of your own times. If you judge that your own time is ridden with empty insincere formalities, you plump for spontaneity, for indecorous behavior even...Much of morality is the task of compensating for one's age. One assumes unfashionable virtues, in an indecorous time. In a time hollowed out by decorum, one must school oneself in spontaneity.
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Sell a country?! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?
Identity is a prison you can never escape, but the way to redeem your past is not to run from it, but to try to understand it, and use it as a foundation to grow.
Life without Liberty is like a body without spirit. Liberty without thought is like a disturbed spirit.
Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity.
Nor does God whisper through the trees. His voice is not to be mistaken. When men hear it they fall to their knees and their souls are riven and they cry out to Him and there is no fear but only wildness of heart that springs from such longing.
In choosing your god, you choose your way of looking at the universe. There are plenty of Gods. Choose yours.