I think ambition is a desire for recognition. People want to be special. I think ambition can take in a whole package of things, power or sexual exci…

- James Wolcott

Used to be, conservatives revered the Average American, that Norman Rockwell oil painting of diner food, humble faith, honest toil, and Capraesque vi…

- James Wolcott

Wisdom is for statues. Humor uncaps our inhibitions, unleashes our energies, seals friendships, patches hurts. Laughing is probably the most alive yo…

- James Wolcott

Like Andy Warhol and unlike God Almighty, Larry King does not presume to judge; all celebrities are equal in his eyes, saints and sinners alike shari…

- James Wolcott

In the voyeurism of Reality TV, the viewer's passivity is kept intact, pampered and massaged and force-fed Chicken McNuggets of carefully edited snip…

- James Wolcott

Even the most piddling life is of momentous consequence to its owner.

- James Wolcott

Book-jacket design may become a lost art, like album-cover design, without which late-20th-century iconography would have been pauperized.

- James Wolcott

As music migrates into our iPods, CD collections require less and less room, residing in our heads rather than resounding off the walls. The protract…

- James Wolcott

With 'Black Swan,' the ballerina saga flips its tiara and goes on a hallucinatory bender, a scary acid trip where transfiguration and disfiguration m…

- James Wolcott