The stigma of the prostitute is the badge of her identity. That is why the client goes to her. If he wanted someone without a stigma, he'd go and screw the lady next door.

Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope.

What is pretty in nature is confined to the thin skin of the globe upon which we huddle. Scratch that skin, and nature's daemonic ugliness will erupt.

Promiscuity in men may cheapen love but sharpen thought. Promiscuity in women is illness, a leakage of identity.

I am waiting impatiently for the day when beleaguered, like-minded academics can order James Wolcott's collected essays for their classes.

My generation of bossy, confident, baby-boom women were something brand new in history. Our energy and assertiveness weren't created by Betty Friedan, unknown before her 1963 book, or by Gloria Steinem, whose political activism, as even the Lifetime profile admitted, did not begin until 1969.

My political philosophy as a libertarian says that government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior. My professional ethic as a thinker and writer, however, says that self-knowledge is our ultimate responsibility