“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...”

“The mask of art is the means through which corruption is spread. The mask makes vice seem beautiful, turns squalor and nastiness into glamorous thrill, seduces the onlooker into the game and leave...”

“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.”

“All we do is work to maximise our consumption privileges and to be able to tell people at parties that were a lawyer, an artist or a police officer.”

“But even in the much-publicized rebellion of the young against the materialism of the affluent society, the consumer mentality is too often still intact: the standards of behavior are still those o...”

“We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of yo...”

“For Zola, as for Huysmans, nature itself is uncanny because it is the domain of the feminine, a domain that is constitutionally defective, lacking, even pathological.”

“It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers th...”

“More than GM Foods I am afraid of GMM People. Genetically and Mentally Mutated People. The Entire Ecosystem Mutates.”

“We men of this age are rotten with book-lore and with a yearning for the past.”

“With you I feel like I'm already good enough; I only have to believe it. I can't lose you again. He needed to make the confession because he was realising that Lachlan meant as much to him nowas he...”

“With you I feel like I'm already good enough; I only have to believe it. I can't lose you again.” He needed to make the confession because he was realising that Lachlan meant as much to him nowas h...”