The ultimate sin of any performer is contempt for the audience. – Lester Bangs
The only questions worth asking today are whether humans are going to have any emotions tomorrow, and what the quality of life will be if the answer is no. – Lester Bangs
They wouldnt be heroes if they were infallible, in fact they wouldnt be heroes if they werent miserable wretched dogs, the pariahs of the earth, besides which the only reason to build up an idol is to tear it down again. – Lester Bangs
As far as a truly radical conscience, you have to take it as part of a larger thing, that it was sort of historical inevitability that with the coming of a leaguer society people would start to use drugs a lot more then they had before. – Lester Bangs
We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves. – James Thurber
The Miss America contest is the most perfectly rendered theater in our culture, for it so perfectly captures what we yearn for: a low-class ritual, a polished restatement of vulgarity, that wants to open the door to high-class respectability by way of plain middle-class anxiety and ambition. – Gerald Early