The ultimate sin of any performer is contempt for the audience. – Lester Bangs
Its much easier to wear a Chairman Mao button and shake your fists in the air and all that, then to actually read the Communist manifesto and things like that and actually become involved in politics. – Lester Bangs
Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity. – 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
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