The happiest marriages are full of alternative lives, lived in the head, unknown to the partner.

- John Bayley

Vermeer's woman reading a letter is as full of latent or subliminal kitsch as Tolstoy's War and Peace.

- John Bayley

Kitsch of course only comes into existence when we recognize how and why it works.

- John Bayley

One function of art is to de-kitschify kitsch.

- John Bayley