"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had? … I haven’t done so enough before—and now I'm too old; too old at any rate for what I see. … What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. … Still, we have the illusion of freedom; therefore don't be, like me, without the memory of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it; I don’t quite know which. Of course at present I'm a case of reaction against the mistake. … Do what you like so long as you don't make my mistake. For it was a mistake. Live!"
— Henry James (The Ambassadors)

"1) Bad taste is real taste, of course, and good taste is the residue of someone else's privilege.

2) I have always associated the desire to make money with a profound lack of confidence in one's ability to make a living, to makes one's way in the world through wit and wile.

3) (on Las Vegas) ... there is something worth saving here, something critical to the eco-system of the republic. Because people revel here who suffer at home--are free here who would otherwise languish in bondage. ... This is their secret place. From their hotel window, it stretches out into the night like a neon garden, supine in its worldly innocence, the pure virus of American culture denatured, literally, in the petri dish of the desert--virgin territory. Here, in the heart of the drift, is the last refuge of unsanctioned risk and spectacle--the wellspring of our indigenous visual culture--the confluence of all the hustle and the muscle ... "
— Dave Hickey (Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy)