Susan Sontag: The Complete Rolling Stone Interview

There’s not only a human need for transcendence, there’s a human capacity for transcendence and for more profound states of feeling and for a greater sensitivity, and this has always been described in religious terms in one way or another

Now, there is a truth in the romanticization of illness. I’m not trying to say that to be ill is nothing but a helpless physical condition

Everything in this society—in the way we live—conspires to eliminate anything other than the most banal level of feelings

But, of course, I also know some people who are ill who are extremely exhibitionistic and can be sadistic, using their illness to dominate people and to exploit them

Well, I think she’s fabulous—people run her down all the time in France, but although I disagree with parts of The Second Sex, I think it’s still the best feminist book up till now—she’s way ahead of the so-called movement. And I also think she’s the first person to really deal with what it’s like to be old as a cultural phenomenon

The point about women is or should be obvious, but people haven’t said how awful and embarrassed and diminished and apologetic they feel about being old

I don’t think you can have everything, and you need to make choices

and in that respect I feel very American, but there does come a point when you have to acknowledge that you’re no longer postponing something and that you really have made a choice

The values associated with youth and with masculinity are considered to be the human norms, and anything else is taken to be at least less worthwhile or inferior. Old people have a terrific sense of inferiority. They’re embarrassed to be old

I think that the young-old polarization and the male-female polarization are perhaps the two leading stereotypes that imprison people