Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

On asceticism

I have never understood asceticism. I have always thought it proceeded from lack of sensuousness, lack of vitality. I’ve never realised 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, Journals, vol. 1, p. 280.