“ Perhaps the only people with the right to look at images of suffering of this extreme order are those who could do something to alleviate it - say, the surgeons at the military hospital where the phot… Susan Sontag
“ Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer. Susan Sontag
“ I am sometimes asked about the concept or definition of a 'public intellectual,' and though I find the whole idea faintly silly, I believe it should ideally mean that the person so identified is self-… Christopher Hitchens
“ Often something looks, or is felt to look, "better" in a photograph. Indeed, it is one of the functions of photography to improve the normal appearance of things. (Hence, one is always disappointed by… Susan Sontag
“ Making suffering loom larger, by globalizing it, may spur people to feel they ought to "care" more. Susan Sontag
“ Photographs that depict suffering shouldn't be beautiful, as captions shouldn't moralize. Susan Sontag
“ In fact, there are many uses of the innumerable opportunities a modern life supplies for regarding - at a distance, through the medium of photography - other people's pain. Susan Sontag
“ What is odd is not that so many of the iconic news photos of the past, including some of the best-remembered pictures from the Second World War, appear to have been staged. It is that we are surprised… Susan Sontag
“ With time, many staged photographs turn back into historical evidence, albeit of an impure kind - like most historical evidence. Susan Sontag
