I have never understood asceticism. I have always thought it proceeded from a lack of sensuousness, lack of vitality. I’ve never realized that there is a form of asceticism–consisting in simplifying one’s needs and seeking to take a more active role in satisfying them–which is precisely a more developed kind of sensuousness.

Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

(via heteroglossia)