It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more. This more, it proposes, will make us in some way richer – even though we will be poorer by having spent our money.

By refusing to enter a conspiracy, one remains innocent of that conspiracy. But to remain innocent may also be to remain ignorant.

Publicity begins by working on a natural appetite for pleasure.

Adriaen Brouwer was the only exceptional ‘genre’ painter.

Original paintings are silent and still in a sense that information never is.

thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee’.

History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the present leads to mystification of the past. The past is not for living in; it is a well of conclusions from which we draw in order to act.

Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The image then makes him envious of himself as he might be.

The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life.