Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover,... serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
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.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »