Good advice, like a secret, is easier to give away than to keep. (264)
“If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid my angels will take flight as well,” said Rilke in sharp defiance of the future industry of TV and self-help-book exorcism. (288)
Great elaboration of Camp:
Camp is not in rugby football.
Camp is not in the Old Testament.
Camp is not in St Paul.
Camp is not in Latin lessons, though it might be in Greek.
Camp loves colour.
Camp loves light.
Camp takes pleasure in the surface of things.
Camp loves paint as much as it loves paintings.
Camp prefers style to the stylish.
Camp is pale.
Camp is unhealthy.
Camp is not English, damn it.
But …
Camp is not kitsch.
Camp is not drag.
Camp is not nearly so superficial as it would have you believe.
Camp casts out all fear.
Camp is strong.
Camp is healthy.
And, let’s face it ….
Camp is queer. (136)
And summing up his adolescence:
Didn’t Woody Allen say that all literature was a footnote to Faust. Perhaps all adolescence is a dialogue between Faust and Christ. We tremble on the brink of selling that part of ourselves that is real, unique, angry, defiant and whole for the rewards of attainment, achievement, success and the golden prizes of integration and acceptance; but we also, in our great creating imagination, rehearse the sacrifice we will make:the pain and terror we will take from others’ shoulders, our penetration into the lives and souls of our fellows; our submission and willingness to be rejected and despised for the sake of truth and love and, in the wilderness, our angry rebuttals of the hypocrisy, deception and compromise of a world which we see to be so false.
There is nothing so self-righteous nor so right as an adolescent imagination. (297)
Paston School lived up to all my prejudices, as things always will to the prejudiced. (299)
To Myself: Not to Be Read Until I Am Twenty-Five
I know what you will think when you read this. You will be embarrassed. You will scoff and sneer. Well I tell you now that everything I feel now, everything I am now is truer and better than anything I shall ever be. Ever. This is me now, the real me. Every day that I grow away from the me that is writing this now is a betrayal and a defeat. I expect you will screw this up into a ball with sophisticated disgust, or at best with tolerant amusement but deep down you will know, you will know that you are smothering what you really, really were. This is the age when I truly am. From now on my life will be behind me. I will tell you now, THIS IS TRUE–truer than anything else I will ever write, feel or know. WHAT I AM NOW IS ME, WHAT I WILL BE IS A LIE. (301)