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The NYT printed some excerpts from the journals of Susan Sontag last week. She comes off as someone I might have liked--occasionally pretentious in the way of an academic, not as dangerous as she wished she was, but painfully self-aware.

Some favorites in no particular order:

Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptacle for one’s private, secret thoughts — like a confidante who is deaf, dumb and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.

The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather — in many cases — offers an alternative to it.

My “I” is puny, cautious, too sane. Good writers are roaring egotists, even to the point of fatuity. Sane men, critics, correct them — but their sanity is parasitic on the creative fatuity of genius.

The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes. It is equivalent to a sense of abusing the present.

Sue suggests to me that I need to embrace my egotism. In writing anyway...lord knows it's not an issue otherwise. And that last bit about the fear of aging? Ouch pal.