“The decadent artist markets other people's pain”

“Art makes murder into the supreme image of Beauty and in doing so sets free the vengeful God. (referring to Jean Lorrain's LE VICE ERRANT)”

“Hidden away behind the closed doors of aristocratic and bourgeois privilege, concealed under those ultra-respectable masks of black frock coat and veil, the green glow of corruption flickers into s...”

“Art serves to confront that which is outside order, to give form to the obscene. In the process, it opens it to transformations that can not only make it safe for public consumption, not a powerful...”

“Here, in Lorrain's poisoned little jewel of a tale (The Man Who Made Wax Heads) the consummate achievement of decadent art is caught in miniature. The genius of the artist entangles perpetrators an...”

“Everyone in a decadent society, Lorrain urges, is guilty. Everyone loves masking murder and everyone takes masochistic pleasure in the risk of discovery and punishment.”

“To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.”

“art is risk made visible”

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

“Know that it is a corpse who loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you!...Look, I am not laughing now, crying, crying for you, Christine, who have torn off my mask and who therefore ...”

“I crawled over the mountain of death, Watching the corpses roll down like the stones. Searching for the light which everyone always spoke of. I fought the wolves and also the death, and knocked the...”

“God wasn't love, couldn't be love. Because for me, love was a corpse.”

“It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”

“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.”

“. . . in no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption, and delus...”