Rafael de Soto, one of the best pulp practitioners, once said, “If a pretty girl says, ‘I want to go to bed with you, because I like you,’ that's fine art. If a pretty girl says, ‘I want to go to bed with you, but it's a hundred bucks,’ that's commercial art.”

For Hunter S. Thompson’s seminal piece of gonzo revelation, ‘The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,’ the illustrator’s byline read, “Sketched with eyebrow pencil and lipstick by Ralph Steadman.”

“The big lighting rigs surrounding the pit illuminated the smoke, which made you think you could feel the buildings within the cloud.”

The pitted red clay and worn inscriptions are reminiscent of the exhumed detritus of many an overreaching empire

“When the iron door was opened, sounds peculiar to jails and prisons poured into my ears — the screams, the metallic clanging, officers’ keys clinking. Some of the women noticed me and smiled warmly or threw up their fists in gestures of solidarity”

The drawings become anti-targets, a record of pitchers striving to avoid the bull's-eye that any major leaguer could park in the bleachers.

“No less than Charlie Chaplin, its only pop rival for the affection of Jazz Age aesthetes, Krazy Kat synthesized a particular mixture of sweetness and slapstick, playful fantasy and emotional brutality.”

"Legs, you asshole," I said. "I am not doing this story on you. I am not taking the responsibility for making you famous."

“Apart from Robert Rauschenberg, trim as a biscuit in a light tan velvet suit, no prominent artists were present for the much touted Scull sale at the Parke-Bernet galleries last week”

“Dennis Hopper was followed into dinner by Pee­wee Herman, Debi Mazar, Ann Bass, John Richardson, Michael Chow, and John Wa­ters, each receiving a commemorative Andy Warhol Museum watch from a volunteer who murmured, 'Here's your 15 minutes.' ”