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

"Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other."

"Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them."

Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.

"For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied."