The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

Most people in this society who aren't actively mad are, at best, reformed or potential lunatics.

It's hard not to be afraid. Be less afraid.

You know that you can't make references to the Classics any longer and less and less to the English classics even.

Detachment is the prerogative of an elite; and as the dandy is the nineteenth century's surrogate for the aristocrat in matters ofculture, so Camp is the modern dandyism. Camp is the answer to the problem: how to be a dandy in the age of mass culture.

I certainly identify myself as a feminist.

When you see your 40-page essay turned into a "hot tip" in one paragraph in Newsweek, you get anxious about the way your writing has been used.