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
What pornographic literature does is precisely to drive a wedge between one's existence as a sexual being - while in ordinary life a healthy person is one who prevents such a gap from opening up
Interpretation
The quote critiques how pornography can create a disconnect between one's sexual identity and everyday life.
Susan Sontag's quote highlights the negative impact of pornographic literature on personal identity and sexual expression. It suggests that engaging with such material can lead to a separation of one's sexual being from their everyday existence, undermining the integrity of a healthy, holistic experience of sexuality that should be integrated with one’s life and identity.
In practice
In a discussion on the effects of media on relationships, this quote can highlight concerns about how pornography shapes perceptions of sexuality.
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.
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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.
Deliver me from Swedish furniture. Deliver me from clever art. And the phone rang and Tyler answered. "If you don't know what you want," the doorman said, "you end up with a lot you don't." May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. Deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete.
You should not have a favourite weapon. To become over-familiar with one weapon is as much a fault as not knowing it sufficiently well.
My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.
The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses!
Three things cannot long be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
'What I believe' is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect.
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