Reborn

ALSO BY SUSAN SONTAG
FICTION
The Benefactor • Death Kit • I, etcetera
The Way We Live Now • The Volcano Lover • In America

ESSAYS
Against Interpretation • Styles of Radical Will
On Photography • Illness As Metaphor • Under the Sign of Saturn
AIDS and Its Metaphors • Where the Stress Falls
Regarding the Pain of Others • At the Same Time

FILM SCRIPTS
Duet for Cannibals • Brother Carl

PLAY
Alice in Bed

Fun”—the American substitute for pleasure

To write you have to allow yourself to be the person you don’t want to be (of all the people you are)

My novels [sic] don’t exist as ideas in my head. As I learn when I try to make plans, notes for them. They exist only as they are written; I am blank before. Just as one can’t run a race in one’s head, one must wait for the gun to start

Being lucid = being active, not wanting to be “good,” i.e., not wanting to be liked by each in turn

The life of the city: a life in rooms, where one sits, or lies down. Personal distance is ruled by the disposition of furniture. In a living room, there is only one thing to do with another person (besides make love—i.e., go to the bedroom): sit and talk. The life of the living room forces talk upon us, and inhibits the capacity for play and for contemplation.

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

To I., to love someone is to expose him. To me, to love someone is to prop him up, support him even in his lies

In Philip there is no love of the truth. To think is to defend his will, his moral responses. First he has his conclusions, then he thinks up arguments to support his conclusions. Thinking is the will propping itself up—no surprises

What a delicate instrument language is