Illness as Metaphor Quotes

“Depression is melancholy minus its charms.”
― Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor

“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 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

“Theories that diseases are caused by mental states and can be cured by will power are always an index of how much is not understood about a disease.”
― Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor

“To describe a phenomenon as a cancer is an incitement to violence. The use of cancer in political discourse encourages fatalism and justifies “severe” measures.”
― Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor