"A cult is a religion with no political power."
— Tom Wolfe

"Everybody is going to be what they are, and whatever they are, there's not going to be anything to apologize about."
— Tom Wolfe

"Put your good where it will do the most!"
— Tom Wolfe (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test)

"Everybody, everybody everywhere, has his own movie going, his own scenario, and everybody is acting his movie out like mad, only most people don’t know that is what they’re trapped by, their little script."
— Tom Wolfe (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test)

"A glorious place, a glorious age, I tell you! A very Neon renaissance - And the myths that actually touched you at that time - not Hercules, Orpheus, Ulysses and Aeneas - but Superman, Captain Marvel, and Batman."
— Tom Wolfe

"The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it. "
— Tom Wolfe

""America is a wonderful country! I mean it! No honest writer would challenge that statement! The human comedy never runs out of material! it never lets you down!" "
— Tom Wolfe

"None of us are going to deny what other people are doing. If saying bullshit is somebody's thing, then he says bullshit. If somebody is an ass-kicker, then that's what he's going to do on this trip, kick asses. He's going to do it right out front and nobody is going to have anything to get pissed off about. He can just say, 'I'm sorry I kicked you in the ass, but I'm not sorry I'm an ass-kicker. That's what I do, I kick people in the ass.' Everybody is going to be what they are, and whatever they are, there's not going to be anything to apologize about. What we are, we're going to wail with on this whole trip."
— Tom Wolfe (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test)

"You can be denounced from the heavens, and it only makes people interested."
— Tom Wolfe (Hooking Up)

"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph."
— Tom Wolfe (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test)

""And - of course! - the Non-people. The whole freaking world was full of people who were bound to tell you they weren't qualified to do this or that but they were determined to go ahead and do just that thing anyway.""
— Tom Wolfe (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test)

"(W)hat I write when I force myself is generally just as good as what I write when I'm feeling inspired. It's mainly a matter of forcing yourself to write."
— Tom Wolfe

"Like more than one Englishman in New York, he looked upon Americans as hopeless children whom Providence had perversely provided with this great swollen fat fowl of a continent. Any way one chose to relieve them of their riches, short of violence, was sporting, if not morally justifiable, since they would only squander it in some tasteless and useless fashion, in any event."
— Tom Wolfe (The Bonfire of the Vanities)

"What do you mean, blindly? That baby is a very sentient creature… That baby sees the world with a completeness that you and I will never know again. His doors of perception have not yet been closed. He still experiences the moment he lives in.
"
— Tom Wolfe

"the road of knowledge leads to the palace of wisdom

"
— Tom Wolfe

"The Pranksters were now out among them, and it was exhilarating--look at the mothers staring!--and there was going to be holy terror in the land. But there would also be people who would look up out of their work-a-daddy lives in some town, some old guy, somebody's stenographer, and see this bus and register...delight, or just pure open-invitation wonder. Either way, the Intrepid Travelers figured, there was hope for these people. They weren't totally turned off...the citizens were suitably startled, outraged, delighted, nonplused, and would wheel around and start or else try to keep their cool by sidling glances like they weren't going to be impressed by any weird shit--and a few smiled in a frank way as if to say, I am with you--if only I could be with you!"
— Tom Wolfe

"...en route to the final destination, which was always to get trashed, wasted, hammered, crunked up, bombed, wrecked, sloshed, fried, flapjacked, fucked-up, or get plainlong fucked, laid, drained, get some ass, get some head, some skull, a lube job, get your oil changed, get some brown sugar, quiff, goo, pussy..."
— Tom Wolfe (I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel)

""In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, old people in America had prayed, 'Please God, don't let me look poor.' In the year 2000, they prayed, 'Please God, don't let me look old.' Sexiness was equated with youth, and youth ruled. The most widespread age-related disease was not senility but juvenility."
"
— Tom Wolfe (Hooking Up)

""America is a wonderful country! I mean it! No honest writer would challenge that statement! The human comedy never runs out of material! it never lets you down!" "
— Tom Wolfe