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What all this posturing and fake glamor results in is a vast detachment and cynicism on the part of the artists. Since it's impossible to have respect for an audience that'll take just about anything you care to dish out, and the impassive demeanor is so central to the role, a general numbnose is all that can be expected.

— Lester Bangs Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

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More quotes by Lester Bangs

Realizing that life is precious the natural tendency is to trample on it, like laughing at a funeral.

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

The extravagant and ostentatious lifestyles that pass for charisma in a time when almost anybody talks about charisma but if you think about it there's precious little to be seen.

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

A hero is a goddam stupid thing to have in the first place and a general block to anything you might wanta accomplish on your own.

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

John Lennon at his best despised cheap sentiment and had to learn the hard way that once you've made your mark on history those who can't will be so grateful they'll turn it into a cage for you.

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

All the proliferating falsifications of what I and everyone I know experienced once in what it is now so convenient to call the "fifties" or "sixties," as if life was really measured or lived in arbitrary decades, when the history books are sold like comix.

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

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