“Somehow the tincture of aesthetic bathes every big occasion in hypocrisy, as though a napalm salesman kept asking you to admire the color of the flames.”

“The social success of the Shah in the galaxy of international despots is the end result of a careful campaign, premised on two vital ingredients: snobbery and cash”

“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.' ”

“A Coke is a Coke,” Warhol once said, “and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.”

“Since I was shot,” Warhol says, “everything is such a dream to me. I don’t know what anything is about. Like I don’t even know whether or not I’m really alive or — whether I died. It’s sad”

“Jackie Curtis and her bridal party sat nervously on the back of the roof, behind the chimneys and the pipes, waiting for the groom. He never appeared.”

How did people ever swallow the supposition that the real Warhol was a white-wigged idiot standing around saying, “Great”?

“Warhol has so arranged his discotheque that his patrons tend to feel that they have wandered into some evangelist's vision of Nineveh and that perhaps it is time to mend their ways.”

“It seems the Velvets are now back to where they once belonged, functioning as a genuine rock ‘n’ roll dance band ... The result can be positively exhilarating”

“The sophisticated audience that had turned out to put down the art that was not on display provided a chilling touch of surrealism worthy of Buñuel or Fellini”