Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world - in order to set up a shadow world of 'meanings.' It is to turn the world into this world. ('This world'! As if there were any other.) The world, our world, is depleted, impoverished enough. Away with all duplicates of it, until we again experience more immediately what we have. Susan Sontag
Some Similar Quotes
  1. But instead of spending our lives running towards our dreams, we are often running away from a fear of failure or a fear of criticism. - Eric Wright
  2. A creative life cannot be sustained by approval any more than it can be destroyed by criticism. - Will Self
  3. Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. - Flannery OConnor
  4. Eccentricity is not, as some would believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions... - Edith Sitwell
  5. Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, orperhaps of subconsciousness– I wouldn't know. But I amsure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness. - Aaron Copland
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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