A cult is a religion with no political power.
Tom Wolfe

A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested.
Tom Wolfe

America - It is a fabulous country, the only fabulous country; it is the only place where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time.
Tom Wolfe

At the outset, at least, all three groups had something else to recommend them, as well: They were headquartered 3,000 miles away from the East Side of Manhattan.
Tom Wolfe

Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.
Tom Wolfe

Death the last voyage, the longest, and the best.
Tom Wolfe

Frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can't see a painting.
Tom Wolfe

If a man has talent and can't use it, he's failed. If he uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he uses the whole of it, he has succeeded, and won a satisfaction and triumph few men ever know.
Tom Wolfe

In Sleep we lie all naked and alone, in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness, and we are strange and beautiful asleep; for we are dying the darkness and we know no death.
Tom Wolfe

Is not this the true romantic feeling - not to desire to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping you?
Tom Wolfe

It is very comforting to believe that leaders who do terrible things are, in fact, mad. That way, all we have to do is make sure we don't put psychotics in high places and we've got the problem solved.
Tom Wolfe

Love is the ultimate expression of the will to live.
Tom Wolfe

Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores.
Tom Wolfe

On Wall Street he and a few others - how many? three hundred, four hundred, five hundred? had become precisely that... Masters of the Universe.
Tom Wolfe

One belongs to New York instantly. One belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.
Tom Wolfe

Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America - that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement.
Tom Wolfe

Radical Chic, after all, is only radical in Style; in its heart it is part of Society and its traditions.
Tom Wolfe

The attitude is we live and let live. This is actually an amazing change in values in a rather short time and it's an example of freedom from religion.
Tom Wolfe

The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.
Tom Wolfe

The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.
Tom Wolfe