Jackie Burnett

“Being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country is a quintessential modern experience, the cumulative offering by more than a century and a half’s worth of those professional, specialized tourists known as journalists.”
― Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others

“Audiences know what to expect, and that is all that they are prepared to believe in.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Honor is dead. But I'll see what I can do.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance

“So far as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence. To that extent, it can be (for all our good intentions) an impertinent- if not inappropriate- response. To set aside the sympathy we extend to others beset by war and murderous politics for a reflection on how our privileges are located on the same map as their suffering, and may- in ways we might prefer not to imagine- be linked to their suffering, as the wealth as some may imply the destitution of others, is a task for which the painful, stirring images supply only an initial spark.”
― Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others