Susan Sontag Quotes

Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.

Good taste is always bad.

It is the heart that makes the critic, not the nose.

All of life is a dispute over taste and tasting.

Taste is the best judge. It is rare. Art only addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals.

I have my own tastes and I have my my own... like, I dunno. I think it's really subjective; something that I think is a great song, is unlistenable to somebody else, which I've come to realise.

Art has got nothing to do with taste.

Great music is in the ear of the beholder.

I have an opinion. I have my own taste.

Beauty is altogether in the eye of the beholder.

We have no other means of recognising a work of art than our feeling for it.

Art is always good. It just depends if you like or not.

Ultimately, taste is so niche and so personal.

I think one of the most boring things is a person's taste.

Literary criticism has about it neither rigour nor proof. Where it is honest, it is passionate, private experience seeking to persuade.

W]hat makes a work of art ‘good’ for you is not something that is already ‘inside’ it, but something that happens inside you.

There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.

Of which beauty will you speak? There are many: there are a thousand: there is one for every look, for every spirit, adapted to each taste, to each particular constitution.

Taste is the power of relishing or rejecting whatever is offered for the entertainment of the imagination.

Acting, music, painting... it's very subjective. So what I might think is a great actor, you might think is not a very good actor at all.

There are some readers who have never read an essay on taste; and if they take my advice they never will, for they can no more improve their taste by so doing than they could improve their appetite or digestion by studying a cookery-book.

Beauty is an opinion not a fact.

Liking is not always the child of beauty; but whatsoever is liked, to the liker is beautiful.

Art is so personal. I'm very comforted by the fact that certain movies that I love, other people hate. Certain books that I love, other people hate. You can't please everybody.

The most important thing in art is taste.