In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could do 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.

To the contrary, my principle of selection was partly informed by my sense that it was the rawness and the unvarnished portrait this material presents of Susan Sontag as a young person, who self-consciously and determinedly went about creating the self she wanted to be, that was most compelling about the journals. It is for this reason that I have chosen to title this volume Reborn, drawing from a phrase that appears on the front of one of the early journals; it seems to sum up what my mother was about from childhood onward.
(Fra forordet til David Rieff)