Sempre Susan Quotes

“(Socrates to Phaedrus: “I’m a lover of learning, and trees and open country won’t teach me anything.”)”
― Sigrid Nunez, Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag

“[Brodsky] loved cats, and sometimes for a greeting would meow.”
― Sigrid Nunez, Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag

“She was so New York. And in her boosterism, in her energy and ambition, in her can-do, beat-whatever-the-odds spirit, in her childlike nature—and in her belief in her exceptionalism and in the power of her own will, in self-creation, and in the possibility of being reborn, the possibility of endless new chances, and of having it all—she was also the most American person I knew.”
― Sigrid Nunez, Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag

“Once, when we were walking together on a campus outside the city, a chipmunk zipped across our path and dove into a hole at the base of an oak tree. “Oh, look at that,” she said. “Just like Walt Disney.”
― Sigrid Nunez, Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag

“It’s always good to start off anything by breaking a rule.”
― Sigrid Nunez, Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag

“She believed that, in our culture, at least, people were much freer than they thought they were and had more options than they seemed willing to acknowledge.”
― Sigrid Nunez, Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag

“She indulged his long-winded Tolstoy bashing (he saw Tolstoy, “in no way equal to Dostoevsky,” as a kind of highbrow Margaret Mitchell who had helped prepare the way for socialist realism)”
― Sigrid Nunez, Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag

“Another memory. She walks into the kitchen, sits down at the kitchen counter with me, and says, “I just got a very interesting phone call. It was some guy who said he was doing a survey for the Maidenform company, and would I take a minute to answer a couple of questions. So I said sure. And then he started asking things like, was I wearing a bra right now, what kind of bra was it, and what size was it—” “You mean an obscene phone call.” She looks puzzled, then sheepish. “That would explain it.”
― Sigrid Nunez, Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag