Human relationships used to be easy: you had friends, boy- or girlfriends, parents, children, and landlords. Now, thanks to social media, it's all gone sideways.
Susan Orlean
Related It can be easy to become 'friends' or 'connected' with someone in a digital world, b... LEWIS HOWES You know that we've got a few problems we need to talk through before we get married." "I... SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS Do I have the courage of being a ruthless man to myself with the complete knowledge on my manner or ... FEREIDOON YAZDI By linking with friends and ultimately strangers and building those relationships, social media is r... SIMON MAINWARING It used to be you did TV or you did film. Now it's like a media blitz. STEPHEN DORFF We're used to the characteristics of social media - participation, connection, instant gratifica... ADORA SVITAK To be, or not to be, that is the question. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don't be. GOLDA MEIR To be or not to be. That's not really a question. JEAN-LUC GODARD Music can be such a vulnerable thing, so when you're delivering a vocal or writing a piece of mu... KAREN FAIRCHILD All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it's with girlfriends, boyfriends, or fa... AMY WINEHOUSE I do well with peoples' parents, but I've certainly had friends who were not. One of my best... CONNOR PAOLO It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking our careers will come to a standstill, or worse, cra... M. J. ROSE As a function of the easy access to information provided by the Internet, and the ease with which it... SIMON MAINWARING On the evidence I have on hand at home, social media isn't killing our children. It isn't ki... WARREN ELLIS Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls i... JOSEPH CONRAD It's very easy to go through your whole life and never really get anything done or have any real... DEMETRI MARTIN To be mad is worse than not to be if this is what it is. JOHNNY RICH Hamlet's Cat's Soliloquy "To go outside, and there perchance to stay Or to re... HENRY N. BEARD To be or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being. TOM ROBBINS Relationships are like social media. BETA METANI' MARASHI I have never had other kids in the house... I had a huge collection of marbles, and they all had nam... ALEXANDRA ADORNETTO Traveling as much as I do, I get lonely sometimes. I have friends now in cities all over the world, ... BLAKE MYCOSKIE Dream your own dreams, be your own person and image, no matter the extremes. KAYEC JONES Without a doubt, priority No. 1 is always my family. Whether it's my children or my husband or e... VANESSA LACHEY When thinking is overrated And friends are easy to make, Check if it's too complicated <... ANA CLAUDIA ANTUNES Social media are a catalyst for the advancement of everyone's rights. It's where we're r... QUEEN RANIA OF JORDAN As a young adult, we all go through things now on social media. It's a part of our everyday live... JUSTINE SKYE The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surpr... C.S. LEWIS Social media provides an avenue to build relationships with media outlets and have an ongoing relati... AMY JO MARTIN It used to be that in media, Johnny Carson used to be the most important person when he would invite... LISA LAMPANELLI It's not easy to come somewhere new and have to find your place. You might feel someone doesn... FERNANDO TORRES Now we have so many more social outlets, so many ways to be stalked and bullied. If social media is ... KHLOE KARDASHIAN It can literally change someone's life; it's very positive for young teenagers to get into c... YAYA HAN It's so funny how social media was just this fun thing, and now it's this monster that consu... CAZZIE DAVID If money is tight, or you're on a limited budget, then consider DIY or used gifts. DIY could be ... JOHN RAMPTON What's happened to broadcasting is that broadcasting really used to be... it used to have a very... BARRY DILLER It's fine to have social media that connects us with old friends, but we need tools that help us... ETHAN ZUCKERMAN The record labels used to spend money on advertising, and social media has replaced that entirely - ... STEVE AOKI People know your tragedies and they treat you like you’re not human. Like you’re a three-h... ERIC JEROME DICKEY People think actresses find public speaking easy, and it's not easy at all; we're used to hi... JANE FONDA It's terrifying, social media. It terrifies me. FAYE MARSAY We used to be jealous of all our friends who were just taking it easy while we were rehearsing and s... LISA ORIGLIASSO Flaws make us all human, and you're rooting for characters because of those flaws. It's agel... LYNN SHELTON Now, the term 'friend' is a little loose. People mock the 'friending' on social medi... GRETCHEN RUBIN There's no social realism in 'Tyrannosaur.' It's not about the social landscape or t... PADDY CONSIDINE There's only so many variations on the basics of human relationships. To me, it's all about ... K. FLAY S.M." Social Media or Social Menace? I'll leave it to you to work out. ANTHONY T. HINCKS Human beings are not just workers, consumers, or even entrepreneurs. They are also parents, children... MUHAMMAD YUNUS Childhood is a fundamental part of all human lives, parents or not, since that's how we all star... ALISON GOPNIK With social media and all the new technology, there's just more interfaces around and reminders ... PETRA COLLINS You can either allow social media to be helpful for you or it can be harmful. I like to let it be he... CIARA Rural towns aren't always idyllic. It's easy to feel trapped and be aware of social hypocris... BILL PULLMAN To be sure, administrations since Ronald Reagan had gone out of their way to massage and 'spin... NIGEL HAMILTON Somewhere along the way, when we were building social media products, we forgot the reason we like t... EVAN SPIEGEL If you publish something in traditional media, it's one-way. With social media, we get all this ... MA JUN With social media, with Instagram and selfies and all these apps that are trying to make you look pe... MEGHAN TRAINOR Human is what he decides to be. ZAMAN ALI If I just do everything the opposite of what my dad did, I think that will make things pretty easy. ... DERRICK ROSE I know that David Tennant's Hamlet isn't till July. And lots of people are going to be doing Dr Who ... NEIL GAIMAN The kinds of roles dogs fill can be hard to come by in human relationships. We touch the dog or the ... CAROLINE KNAPP There is so much media now with the Internet and people, and so easy and so cheap to start a newspap... RUPERT MURDOCH But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that is going to be Human and isn’t yet, or... C.S. LEWIS The money to fund great things and innovations and programs is gone in our lifetime; it's all go... MICHAEL MOORE Don't tell your kids you had an easy birth or they won't respect you. For years I used to wa... JOAN RIVERS This used to be a government of checks and balances. Now it's all checks and no balances. GRACIE ALLEN There are a lot of pros and cons about social media; it's just how you choose to handle it and h... AUBREY PEEPLES I think that people in the phase between being someone's kid and being someone's parent have... LENA DUNHAM What we create online becomes part of our digital DNA, this in turns becomes part of our human DNA. TIFFANY SUNDAY Autism is a very complex disorder. It used to be that autistic children were classified as 'retarded... GLENDA DAVIS Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There's plenty of movement, but y... H. JACKSON BROWN, JR. It used to be 80 percent of the industry had a 14 hour duty day. But now most of that is gone. It's ... DUANE WOERTH Anytime you're playing a major, the last four or five holes, it's not going to be easy. It... DUSTIN JOHNSON People don't have dominion over Nature. it's gone beyond that. Human beings and the world are now th... DOUGLAS COUPLAND It's so easy to get used to playing a role. Then all of the sudden when you're tossed out of... A. J. COOK There has to be some level of narcissism for one to willingly and actively be on social media or any... ROSA M. BETANCES Because of social media, a lot of people think they can be, like, a rapper or a singer or a musician... SKY FERREIRA With technology and social media and citizen journalism, every rock that used to go unturned is now ... LZ GRANDERSON Social media and the Internet haven't changed our capacity for social interaction any more than ... NICHOLAS A. CHRISTAKIS Social media... it's the future for the new generation. CAMERON DALLAS In the 1950s and 1960s, many parents were generally standoffish with their male children and acted a... EZEKIEL EMANUEL I used to be a rabid reader, but now it's scripts or nothing - network television is quite relen... ROBERT CARLYLE Because it's so easy to medicate our need for self-worth by pandering to win followers, 'lik... NEIL STRAUSS Children tease each other because you're short or you're tall or you're a redhead or bec... HEATHER WILSON I usually try to stay off my phone and enjoy the world, but when I am on my phone, it's always f... ROSS LYNCH Do you love me as the person that I am now, or do you love me as the person I used to be? ANTHONY T. HINCKS The Virtual Girlfriends are within the game itself, they're not other players. So there's a whole ho... KRISTIN MCDONNELL We want to bring people back to normal human social relationships. Your digital stuff can be there, ... RONY ABOVITZ To date or not to date that is the question. It's almost as important as Shakespeare's to be... AL GOLDSTEIN Some of my college friends used to laugh at me. But no one's laughing anymore. Now, they all try... GARRETT NEFF I've always had tremendous support from my parents. I think there's a myth that gay people h... B. D. WONG That is very different from how it used to be in the 20th century. Media was very one way. There'... JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT I'm aware that many of my friends will be saddened and shocked, or shock-saddened, over some of ... J. D. SALINGER People who smile while they are alone used to be called insane, until we invented smartphones and so... MOKOKOMA MOKHONOANA It's a bloody shame that all the video stores have gone, I'll tell you. Everything's so ... ALEXANDRA CASSAVETES Social media is about friending someone so they'll invite you to a party or get you a job. If th... EVAN SPIEGEL Life used to be a rite of passage in and of itself. But it's not our parents' generation any... BEN SCHNETZER Traditional social media, in the view of our company, has become a bit repetitive. It doesn't fe... EVAN SPIEGEL It's proper netiquette to add suggested friends to your social media accounts. NetworkEtiquette.net DAVID CHILES Friends are not a number. You can't collect connections. You can't just go out one day and be like, ... CONNOR FRANTA
More Susan Orlean
I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approa... SUSAN ORLEAN Winter in the country is very white. There is black grit on all the shoulders of the roads and on th... SUSAN ORLEAN A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky, unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder... SUSAN ORLEAN To my great surprise, Twitter is not housed in a silver pod that orbits Earth at supersonic speeds, ... SUSAN ORLEAN I want to let my friend Buster know that I would like to have dinner with him tonight. Does Buster w... SUSAN ORLEAN I wonder what book signings will be like when most of the books we read are electronic. Will authors... SUSAN ORLEAN Now we're e-mailing and tweeting and texting so much, a phone call comes as a fresh surprise. I ... SUSAN ORLEAN I have no idea how to get in touch with anyone anymore. Everyone, it seems, has a home phone, a cell... SUSAN ORLEAN Living in a rural setting exposes you to so many marvelous things - the natural world and the partic... SUSAN ORLEAN I want a chainsaw very badly, because I think cutting down a tree would be unbelievably satisfying. ... SUSAN ORLEAN I was never any good at remembering dates, but now I hardly have to. When the first bulb catalogs ge... SUSAN ORLEAN I don't care that much about rote memorization. An old boyfriend of mine used to get into lacera... SUSAN ORLEAN When I wonder what the future of books will be, I often think about horses. Before automobiles exist... SUSAN ORLEAN Recently, I have come to assume that any call to my landline is from a telemarketer or an automated ... SUSAN ORLEAN When it comes to consumer electronics, I'm a big fat sucker, because even though I know you shou... SUSAN ORLEAN I remember thinking that a girdle was barbaric, and that never in a million years would I treat myse... SUSAN ORLEAN I finally overcame my phobia, and now I approach flying with a sort of studied boredom - a learned h... SUSAN ORLEAN My ace in the hole as a human being used to be my capacity for remembering birthdays. I worked at it... SUSAN ORLEAN Election Day outside of big cities is different. For one thing, there are so few people in my town t... SUSAN ORLEAN Sometimes, the Internet can feel like a middle-school playground populated by brats in ski masks who... SUSAN ORLEAN You could go crazy thinking of how unprivate our lives really are - the omnipresent security cameras... SUSAN ORLEAN You can find out anything you want about a car now, and especially every bit of information about th... SUSAN ORLEAN I am dismayed to realize that much of the advice I used to parcel out to aspiring writers has passed... SUSAN ORLEAN Most fourth graders can't say why Abraham Lincoln is an important historical figure? Wow. This i... SUSAN ORLEAN I don't turn to greeting cards for wisdom and advice, but they are a fine reflection of the gene... SUSAN ORLEAN I love tearing things out of the ground. I love digging and discarding. I love pruning. In fact, I l... SUSAN ORLEAN Borders had lousy management and made bad corporate decisions, so its fate is less like a terrible a... SUSAN ORLEAN I have long been one of those tedious people who rails against the coronation of 'student-athlet... SUSAN ORLEAN When I was a kid, phone calls were a premium commodity; only the very coolest kids had a phone line ... SUSAN ORLEAN I remember, when I was a kid, watching my mother jam herself into her girdle - a piece of equipment ... SUSAN ORLEAN There will always be vain, obsessive people who want to own rare and extraordinary things whatever t... SUSAN ORLEAN Sometimes I'm dazzled by how modern and fabulous we are, and how easy everything can be for us; ... SUSAN ORLEAN 'Brave' is one of those words that has been bleached of most of its meaning these days, than... SUSAN ORLEAN There was a time when I kept track of it all; when my mind worked like a giant lint brush being swep... SUSAN ORLEAN The semiology and phenomenology of hashtaggery intrigues me. From what I understand, it all began ve... SUSAN ORLEAN In an interesting inversion of status, the reigning breed in the dog park these days is the really-o... SUSAN ORLEAN When I was a kid, Halloween was strictly a starchy-vegetable-only holiday, with pumpkins and Indian ... SUSAN ORLEAN Parents, it seems, have an almost Olympian persistence when it comes to suggesting more secure and l... SUSAN ORLEAN Unlimited choice is paralyzing. The Internet has made this form of paralysis due to option overload ... SUSAN ORLEAN Places like Hilton Head, with water adjacency and nice climates, are in high demand, and land values... SUSAN ORLEAN One of the very best reasons for having children is to be reminded of the incomparable joys of a sno... SUSAN ORLEAN The first thing I think about when I wake up most mornings is the fact that I'm tired. I have be... SUSAN ORLEAN I had never considered using a hashtag anywhere other than on Twitter, but now I'm inspired. Tex... SUSAN ORLEAN I, too, had set out to be remembered. I had wanted to create something permanent in my life- some pr... SUSAN ORLEAN Why, I wonder, should the popularity of a news story matter to me? Does it mean it's a good stor... SUSAN ORLEAN On the very same day that I ordered an iPad 2, I went shopping to buy myself a letter opener. I like... SUSAN ORLEAN Buying a car used to be an experience so soul-scorching, so confidence-splattering, so existentially... SUSAN ORLEAN In my perfect world, we would establish perhaps four national zoos of unimpeachable quality and clos... SUSAN ORLEAN I'm very excited about my new Spotify account, which gives me access to twenty gazillion songs a... SUSAN ORLEAN I remember three- and four-week-long snow days, and drifts so deep a small child, namely me, could g... SUSAN ORLEAN Everything rational and sensible abandons me when I try to throw out photographs. Time and time agai... SUSAN ORLEAN I rarely listen to commercial radio, and when I do, I'm shocked by how many ads there are, and h... SUSAN ORLEAN You may never learn the names of any of the people you talk to in a dog park, even after many, many ... SUSAN ORLEAN Sense of smell, of course, is only one of those dog qualities that can't be replicated or improv... SUSAN ORLEAN I've always been afraid of video games - not afraid that I wouldn't like them, but that I wo... SUSAN ORLEAN What's funny is that the idea of popularity - even the use of the word 'popular' - is so... SUSAN ORLEAN They will be given as gifts; books that are especially pretty or visual will be bought as hard copie... SUSAN ORLEAN In the course of transferring all my CDs to my iPod, I have found myself wandering the musical hallw... SUSAN ORLEAN I work at home, in the country, and days will go by when, except for my husband and son and the occa... SUSAN ORLEAN Hard work - I mean, does anybody use that term anymore? Laziness doesn't fly. It's all in th... SUSAN POWTER At the end of the day, both men and women who become CEOs have showed tenacity and hard work to succ... SUSAN WOJCICKI Coming out of the Louvre for the first time in 1971, dizzy with new love, I stood on Pont Neuf and m... SUSAN VREELAND My life is fair game for anybody. I spent an unhappy, penniless childhood in Brooklyn. I had to slug... SUSAN HAYWARD When I travel, I always take my Winsor & Newton watercolor kit, which is the size of a pack of c... SUSAN MINOT I've been married so long, I am on my third bottle of Tabasco sauce. SUSAN VASS A fiction about soft or easy deaths is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considere... SUSAN SONTAG The writer is either a practicing recluse or a delinquent, guilt-ridden one; or both. Usually both. SUSAN SONTAG The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. The least energizing emotion to write... SUSAN SONTAG Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we... SUSAN ERTZ Soaring prescription drug costs have placed a tremendous strain on family budgets. They have also im... SUSAN COLLINS My own cabaret is constantly evolving with what is occurring in my own life, so motherhood is a natu... SUSAN EGAN One of the things I was hoping to do in the Secretary of the State's Office when I came was to p... SUSAN BYSIEWICZ The kids are Job One. So, to be quite candid, if they need me, I do my utmost to make sure I'm t... SUSAN RICE I can't begin to count how many times I have warned politicians and candidates to worry as much ... SUSAN ESTRICH My first novel, 'Compromising Positions,' was a whodunit. The protagonist was a Long Island ... SUSAN ISAACS I try to live my life every day in the present, and try not to turn a blind eye to injustice and nee... SUSAN SARANDON I'll never throw away my blue jeans. SUSAN FORD So much of memory comes from the beginning of our lives when we know the world for the first time wi... SUSAN SHREVE Most people don't know who Ken Mehlman is. He's the chairman of the Republican Party, obviou... SUSAN ESTRICH We don't have an eternity to realize our dreams, only the time we are here. SUSAN TAYLOR Lying is the most simple form of self-defence. -Susan Sontag. SUSAN SONTAG A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated sp... SUSAN SONTAG The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own. SUSAN SONTAG It's a pleasure to share one's memories. Everything remembered is dear, endearing, touching, precio... SUSAN SONTAG After one hundred days of confinement following a bone marrow transplant, I rejoiced in taking short... SUSAN VREELAND Do you really have to be the ice queen intellectual or the slut whore? Isn't there some way to be bo... SUSAN SARANDON It is the nature of aphoristic thinking to be always in a state of concluding; a bid to have the fin... SUSAN SONTAG Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating th... SUSAN SONTAG We have a great location between Boston and New York, a highly educated work force, and Connecticut ... SUSAN BYSIEWICZ I had wanted to be a regular character on a series for a while. 'The Brady Bunch' was an ans... SUSAN OLSEN I would rather be at Reggae Sunsplash, which happens once a year, than doing some horrible Brady Bun... SUSAN OLSEN Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but ... SUSAN CAIN War-making is one of the few activities that people are not supposed to view realistically; that is,... SUSAN SONTAG Reality Check His lying is not contigent on who you are or what you do. His lying is not your f... SUSAN FORWARD Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to the... SUSAN SONTAG Al forms of consensus about great books and perennial problems, once stabilized, tend to deteriorate... SUSAN SONTAG American energy is the energy of violence, of free-floating resentment and anxiety unleashed by chro... SUSAN SONTAG The quality of American life is an insult to the possibilities of human growth... the pollution of A... SUSAN SONTAG Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intelle... SUSAN SONTAG The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art -- and, by analogy, our own expe... SUSAN SONTAG In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art ... SUSAN SONTAG Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the ra... SUSAN SONTAG Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading towa... SUSAN SONTAG I believe in using words, not fists... I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on... SUSAN SARANDON What is most beautiful in virile men is sometimes feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women... SUSAN SONTAG The more interesting life becomes, in other words, the more boredom we are doomed to experience. SUSAN MAUSHART When the enemy has no face, society will invent one. SUSAN FALUDI Ah, Macy Joleen O'James, I love you. More than I ever knew it was possible to love someone. I want t... SUSAN ANDERSEN Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehe... SUSAN SONTAG The problems of this world are only truly solved in two ways: by extinction or duplication. SUSAN SONTAG She knew with painful certainty that the opposite of love was not hate, but indifference. SUSAN WIGGS Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The questio... SUSAN SONTAG So that’s your sister?” asks Dee in a quiet voice. “Yeah.” “The one you risked y... SUSAN EE We all go through the same things - it's just a different kind of the same thing SUSAN GLASPELL And it's really very difficult to kill someone when all your inner instincts would oblige you to tak... SUSAN KAY A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world." [Speech upon being awa... SUSAN SONTAG Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager. SUSAN SONTAG Most men experience getting older with regret, apprehension. But most women experience it even more ... SUSAN SONTAG It's a pleasure to share one's memories. Everything remembered is dear, endearing, touching, preciou... SUSAN SONTAG Unfortunately, moral beauty in art -- like physical beauty in a person -- is extremely perishable. I... SUSAN SONTAG Nature in America has always been suspect, on the defensive, cannibalized by progress. In America, e... SUSAN SONTAG The becoming of man is the history of the exhaustion of his possibilities. SUSAN SONTAG The painter constructs, the photographer discloses. SUSAN SONTAG It is not altogether wrong to say that there is no such thing as a bad photograph -- only less inter... SUSAN SONTAG In America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents ... SUSAN SONTAG The taste for worst-case scenarios reflects the need to master fear of what is felt to be uncontroll... SUSAN SONTAG The past itself, as historical change continues to accelerate, has become the most surreal of subjec... SUSAN SONTAG Intelligence is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. SUSAN SONTAG You're only has good as your last haircut. SUSAN LEE Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be ... SUSAN SONTAG With the modern diseases (once TB, now cancer) the romantic idea that the disease expresses the char... SUSAN SONTAG The ideology of capitalism makes us all into connoisseurs of liberty -- of the indefinite expansion ... SUSAN SONTAG Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a s... SUSAN SONTAG Perversity is the muse of modern literature. SUSAN SONTAG Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ... SUSAN SONTAG One person's constant is another person's variable. SUSAN GERHART Ambition if it feeds at all, does so on the ambition of others. SUSAN SONTAG Slow buds the pink dawn like a rose From out night's gray and cloudy sheath; Softly and still it gro... SUSAN COOLIDGE In good films, there is always a directness that entirely frees us from the itch to interpret. SUSAN SONTAG A family's photograph album is generally about the extended family and, often, is all that remains o... SUSAN SONTAG Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest sub... SUSAN SONTAG What pornography is really about, ultimately, isn't sex but death. SUSAN SONTAG What pornographic literature does is precisely to drive a wedge between one's existence as a full hu... SUSAN SONTAG Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. Creative... SUSAN SONTAG I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them. SUSAN SONTAG Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in ou... SUSAN SONTAG Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style -- but a particular kind of style. It is love of the... SUSAN SONTAG Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon... SUSAN ERTZ Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of men... SUSAN SONTAG Disillusion is a natural stage that follows the holding of an illusion. SUSAN SHAUGHNESSY Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms,... SUSAN SONTAG Depression is melancholy minus its charms -- the animation, the fits. SUSAN SONTAG We live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting... SUSAN SONTAG A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated sp... SUSAN SONTAG Cancer patients are lied to, not just because the disease is (or is thought to be) a death sentence,... SUSAN SONTAG AIDS occupies such a large part in our awareness because of what it has been taken to represent. It ... SUSAN SONTAG AIDS obliges people to think of sex as having, possibly, the direst consequences: suicide. Or murder... SUSAN SONTAG Always think of your customers as suppliers first. Work closely with them, so they can supply you wi... SUSAN MARTHALLER I do not think white America is committed to granting equality to the American Negro... this is a pa... SUSAN SONTAG Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism SUSAN SONTAG The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own. SUSAN SONTAG Tamed as it may be, sexuality remains one of the demonic forces in human consciousness -- pushing us... SUSAN SONTAG Fear of sexuality is the new, disease-sponsored register of the universe of fear in which everyone n... SUSAN SONTAG The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. . . . The least energizing emotion ... SUSAN SONTAG Life lives, life dies. Life laughs, life cries. Life gives up and life tries. But life looks differe... SUSAN CHEEVER What we need is to use what we have. SUSAN SONTAG Sanity is a cozy lie. SUSAN SONTAG Enthusiasm is contagious. Be a carrier. SUSAN RABIN It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades. SUSAN SONTAG In the final analysis, style is art. And art is nothing more or less than various modes of stylized,... SUSAN SONTAG The discovery of the good taste of bad taste can be very liberating. The man who insists on high and... SUSAN SONTAG Taste has no system and no proofs. SUSAN SONTAG The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture... SUSAN SONTAG One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves.... SUSAN SONTAG Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoo... SUSAN ERTZ To each man is reserved a work which he alone can do. SUSAN BLOW Feel the fear and do it anyway. SUSAN JEFFERS What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women... SUSAN SONTAG We have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionally. SUSAN CAIN The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking o... SUSAN SONTAG Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. SUSAN ERTZ Progress is the product of human agency. Things get better because we make them better. Things go wr... SUSAN RICE Painting keeps me occupied in those moments when travel can be aimless and even disorienting. Mainly... SUSAN MINOT If we are to garner sustained U.S. domestic support for future trade agreements, we have to make sur... SUSAN RICE I don't want to express alienation. It isn't what I feel. I'm interested in various kind... SUSAN SONTAG Family traditions counter alienation and confusion. They help us define who we are; they provide som... SUSAN LIEBERMAN I love my life, my family and my friends, and I'm drawn to 'relationship' novels because... SUSAN WIGGS Affirmative action was never meant to be permanent, and now is truly the time to move on to some oth... SUSAN ESTRICH You can admire people for sure, and they're worth admiring, but you need to find that special th... SUSAN EGAN Much of what is called investment is actually nothing more than mergers and acquisitions, and of cou... SUSAN GEORGE Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs. SUSAN SONTAG The American fantasy of love is the 'meet-cute,' 'Love at first sight,' and 'You... SUSAN STRAIGHT The past itself, as historical change continues to accelerate, has become the most surreal of subjec... SUSAN SONTAG I am a lover of truth; and if you think of truth as being multifaceted and so huge that we human bei... SUSAN HOWATCH Every time I hear someone making ignorant comments about the supposed 'evils' of homosexuali... SUSAN ESTRICH Today, most young women are exposed to technology at a very young age, with mobile phones, tablets, ... SUSAN WOJCICKI The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own. SUSAN SONTAG To take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability.... SUSAN SONTAG As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people t... SUSAN SONTAG Life is not significant details, illuminated by a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are. SUSAN SONTAG