Lee Siegel Quotes.

11. "Every private thought is performed for public consumption, and every leisure moment (from toilet training to lovemaking) is a highly focused search for a specific gratification, guided by experts serving you in their field. No unexpected events or unanticipated human contact need apply."
- Lee Siegel, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob

12. "I'm writing a book on magic, I explain, and I'm asked, Real magic? By real magic people mean miracles, thaumaturgical acts, and supernatural powers. No, I answer: Conjuring tricks, not real magic. Real magic, in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic."
- Lee Siegel, Net of Magic: Wonders and Deceptions in India

13. "It's okay, you can do it. Because I am playing with myself as I write this, I hope you're doing the same as you read it. Otherwise there's not much point. Go ahead. Don't be shy or modest, prudish or self-conscious. That's it. It feels nice, doesn't it?"
- Lee Siegel, L'Amour dans une langue morte

14. "There is a metaphor somewhere in the story Groucho liked to tell about an encounter with one of his most illustrious peers, W. C. Fields. Fields took Groucho up to his attic, where the astonished Groucho discovered, as he later described it, $50,000 worth of booze up there in boxes. I said ‘Bill, why do you have all that whiskey up here? Don’t you know prohibition is over?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘It may come back.’ In"
- Lee Siegel, Groucho Marx: The Comedy of Existence

15. "Julius, who had a sour, bitter nature, became Groucho. (He was also the quartet’s treasurer, storing their wages in what vaudeville actors called a grouch bag.) Adolph, who played the harp, naturally became Harpo. Leonard the pathological womanizer Fisher dubbed Chico, pronounced Chick-o. Milton, so the story goes, became Gummo because, as a hypochondriac, he put on waterproof sneakers, known as gumshoes, at the first sign of rain. Their"
- Lee Siegel, Groucho Marx: The Comedy of Existence

16. "The same impulse to unman a social or cultural threat gambols across the exchange with Eliot. Why you haven’t been offered the lead in some sexy movies I can only attribute to the stupidity of casting directors, writes the movie star to the dour literary man."
- Lee Siegel, Groucho Marx: The Comedy of Existence