My 1980s & Other Essays Quotes

“How frequently do you look in the mirror? Does your face please you? Are you disgusted to detect familial features? Do you worship or hate your ancestors? Do you consider your image erotic? Do you pretend that you are a star's child? If you squint, does your reflection become abstract? Is abstraction a transcendental escape from identity or a psychotic spasm of depersonalization?”
― Wayne Koestenbaum, My 1980s & Other Essays

“If you care about words you learn quite early in life that it is evil to lie.”
― Wayne Koestenbaum, My 1980s & Other Essays

“Prose divides shame into stations.”
― Wayne Koestenbaum, My 1980s & Other Essays

“I seek for myself the immunity of the diplomatic pouch.”
― Wayne Koestenbaum, My 1980s & Other Essays

“Half the urge to write is the premonition that later the thought I am having might disappear so I had better write it down while I still have the inclination, however overshadowed this desire is by indolence.”
― Wayne Koestenbaum, My 1980s & Other Essays