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Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.

— Susan Sontag Illness As Metaphor (1978)

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More quotes by Susan Sontag

Don't be too hard on the envious. Be glad you have, or had in the past, something enviable.

Death Kit (1967)

From now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck with the task of defending art.

Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)

Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility.

Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)

Not all violence is equally reprehensible; not all wars are equally unjust.

Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness. The truths we respect are those born of affliction.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Susan Sontag (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.