• I reaffirm and celebrate woman's ancient mystery and glamour. I see the mother as an overwhelming force who condemns men to lifelong sexual anxiety, from which they escape through rationalism and physical achievement.
• The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism. Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.
• From first chapter to last, my thesis is that all writing, all art is Apollonian. Every woman who takes pen or brush in hand is making an Apollonian swerve away from nature, even when nature is her subject."
• Gay men may seek sex without emotion; lesbians often end up in emotion without sex.
• Sex is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges.
• Entertainment, media and the arts are nonstop advertisements for homosexuality these days.
• The challenge in reading so melodramatic a writer is figuring out which ideas are genuinely new (and not just unexpected departures from an otherwise predictable ideological platform), which are genuinely original (and not simply designed to shock), and which are sufficiently valuable as to make all the other stuff worth wading through. [from critic Elizabeth Kristol]
• A book by Paglia is a lot like sex itself. When it's good, it's very, very good. And when it's bad, it's still pretty good. [from critic David Link]
• This is megalomania on a lunatic scale. [Mary Beard on Paglia's Vamps & Tramps: New Essays]
• There is one area in which I think Paglia and I would agree that politically correct feminism has produced a noticeable inequity. Nowadays, when a woman behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "Poor dear, it's probably PMS."' Whereas, if a man behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "What an asshole." Let me leap to correct this unfairness by saying of Paglia, Sheesh, what an asshole. [from Molly Ivins]
• As Camille Paglia's success has demonstrated, what is most marketable is absolutism and attitude undiluted by thought. [from Wendy Kaminer]
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About These Quotes
Quote collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis. Each quotation page in this collection and the entire collection © Jone Johnson Lewis 1997-2005. This is an informal collection assembled over many years. I regret that I am not be able to provide the original source if it is not listed with the quote.
Citation information:
Jone Johnson Lewis. "Camille Paglia Quotes." About Women's History. URL: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/camille_paglia.htm. Date accessed: (today). (More on how to cite online sources including this page)
