Television masturbates its audience even though the audience is not really watching. It masturbates orifices the audience doesn't have. It sticks hol…

- James Purdy

I think fame is something that you've achieved in your inner self that becomes known to others outside you. There are really very few famous people i…

- James Purdy

The public is totally illiterate in America. It can't read at all. It's absolutely insensitive to words.

- James Purdy

If you're a writer, you have to be an egomaniac. You have to just believe in yourself, which is hard work.

- James Purdy

Actually, television tells you to take dope. It tells you to destroy the human race really, by first having more consumers and then consuming more po…

- James Purdy

I think America, really, is over.

- James Purdy

I don't think it's like eastern mysticism, which leaves the person whole. It's really another form of cancer, television.

- James Purdy

I am against all machines. It's no wonder that so many Americans go on dope when they have no other cultural stimulus than a television.

- James Purdy

The world is telling you through The New York Times and The New York Review of Books "You must shut up. You must never appear again. Because you are …

- James Purdy