Camille Paglia Quotes

The western mind makes definitions; it draws lines.

Every reading is partial, but that does not absolve us from the quest for meaning, which defines us as a species.

My advice to the reader approaching a poem is to make the mind still and blank. Let the poem speak. This charged quiet mimics the blank space ringing the printed poem, the nothing out of which something takes shape.

Men chase by night those they will not greet by day.

Reunion with the mother is a siren call haunting our imagination. Once there was bliss, and now there is struggle. Dim memories of life before the traumatic separation of birth may be the source of Arcadian fantasies of a lost golden age.

The male orientation of classical Athens was inseparable from its genius. Athens became great not despite but because of its misogyny.