Literary Birthday – 2 April – Camille Paglia

Happy Birthday, Camille Paglia, born on 2 April 1947.

Camille Paglia Quotes

1. Poetry is the way into a spiritual vision of society and the universe.
2. If people want to be better writers, they can’t just read the blogs! You’ve got to look at something that’s outside this rushing world of evanescent words.
3. I certainly derived my skills as a prose writer from my scrutiny of poetry and of the individual word.
4. Charisma is the radiance produced by the interaction of male and female elements in a gifted personality. The charismatic woman has a masculine force and severity. The charismatic man has an entrancing female beauty. Both are hot and cold, glowing with pre-sexual self love.
5. Madonna can still produce a catchy pop song, but she hasn’t expanded her artistic vocabulary since the 1990s. Her concerts are glitzy extravaganzas of special effects overkill. She leaves little space in them for emotional depth or unscripted rapport with the audience.
6. Rule of art: Can’t kills creativity!
7. We cannot have a world where everyone is a victim. “I’m this way because my father made me this way. I’m this way because my husband made me this way.” Yes, we are indeed formed by traumas that happen to us. But you must take charge, you must take over, you are responsible.
8. Men chase by night those they will not greet by day.
9. It is woman’s destiny to rule men. Not to serve them, flatter them, or hang on them for guidance. Nor to insult them, demean them, or stereotype them as oppressors.
10. No teacher has any business telling the young about the present: the young are the present and they are making the future day by day. Every teacher, the moment that he or she steps from the classroom, is already history.

Camille Paglia is an American author, teacher, feminist, and social critic. Paglia advocated the decriminalization of prostitution, abortion, drug use, and pornography. She has long rejected the scientific consensus on global warming. She is also opposed to affirmative action laws. She wrote Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, a bestselling work of literary criticism, followed by Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays, and Vamps & Tramps: New Essays. She also writes articles on art, popular culture, feminism, and politics. Her latest book is Provocations: Collected Essays on Art, Feminism, Politics, Sex, and Education. Paglia was a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1984 until the university’s closure in 2024.

Source for photo: Fronteiras do Pensamento, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

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