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 want to live as long as possible, just to see how stupid it gets.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a desire for life to witness the absurdities of existence.
Susan Sontag's quote expresses a blend of curiosity and skepticism regarding the unfolding events of life and society. It suggests that the speaker finds a certain absurdity in human behavior and experiences, and the wish to live as long as possible is driven by a quest to observe and understand the increasing complexities and irrationalities of existence. This pursuit hints at a philosophical view of life as a series of events that can be both enlightening and bewildering.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of critical thinking, one could reference this quote to highlight the need to question societal norms.
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
Awareness is everything. Hallie once pointed out to me that people worry a lot more about the eternity *after* their deaths than the eternity that happened before they were born. But it's the same amount of infinity, rolling out in all directions from where we stand.
What region of the earth is not full of our calamities?
Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
None but a good man is really a living man, and the more good any man does, the more he really lives. All the rest is death, or belongs to it.
Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life
The break from the supposedly culturally-narrow religious bases of knowledge in favor of supposedly trans-cultural scientific bases of knowledge served as the self-justification of a particularly pernicious form of cultural imperialism.