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
A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A writer observes and reflects on the world around them.
In this quote, Susan Sontag emphasizes the role of a writer as an attentive observer of the world. By paying close attention to their surroundings, a writer is able to capture and convey deep truths and insights, turning ordinary experiences into profound narratives.
Themes
WriterAttentionWorldObservationCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop, this quote could inspire aspiring authors to observe their surroundings for inspiration.
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.
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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
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Failures are inevitable. Unfortunately, in film they live for ever and they're 40 ft wide and 20 ft high.
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When you're a writer and something difficult happens to you, one of the things involved in that is this emergence of narrative potential. And there's then a kind of self-consciousness about telling a story in which you suffered.
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God knows I've had productions where there were actors in my plays who were making more money per week than I was.
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I love this quote uttered by the character Widget in The Night Circus. He credits it to Herr Thiessen but knows it is a literary quote by the another author. "Wine is bottled poetry
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I search for surprise in my architecture. A work of art should cause the emotion of newness.
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All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence. For forty-five years I struggled to resolve this dilemma by writing plays and novels. The more I wrote, the more I realized mere words were not enough. So I found another form of expression.
Yukio MishimaRead