SOURCE: Sontag, Susan, and Edward Hirsch. “Susan Sontag: The Art of Fiction CXLIII.” Paris Review 37, no. 137 (winter 1995): 176-208.

In the following interview, conducted in July, 1994, Sontag reveals the authors who have inspired and influenced her literary career, comments on the craft of writing, and elaborates on the different approaches she takes between writing essays and writing fiction.

Susan Sontag was interviewed in her Manhattan apartment on three blisteringly hot days in July, 1994. She had been traveling back and forth to Sarajevo—she has now been there nine times—and it was gracious of her to set aside time for the interview. Sontag is a prodigious talker—candid, informal, learned, ardent—and each day at a wooden kitchen table held forth for seven and eight-hour stretches. The kitchen is a mixed-use room, but the fax machine and the photocopier were silent; the telephone seldom rang. The conversation ranged over...