For the modern consciousness, the artist (replacing the saint) is the exemplary sufferer. And among artists, the writer, the man of words, is the person to whom we look to be able best to express his suffering.

Susan Sontag
Some Similar Quotes
  1. If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him... - Paulo Coelho

  2. What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  3. The whole image is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. That's the message we're brought up with, isn't it? Believe or die! Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options. - Bill Hicks

  4. Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can. - Dodie Smith

  5. It is that we are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never no helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object of its love. - Sigmund Freud

More Quotes By Susan Sontag
  1. The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.

  2. That's the source of the meditation on death I've carried in my heart all my life.

  3. A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.", Frankfurt Book Fair, October 12, 2003]

  4. The writer is either a practicing recluse or a delinquent, guilt-ridden one--or both. Usually both.

  5. Writing is a mysterious activity.

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