Anxiety is the beginning of conscience, which is the parent of the soul but is not compatible with innocence.

I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.

Sade has a curious ability to render every aspect of sexuality suspect, so that we see how the chaste kiss of the sentimental lover differs only in degree from the vampirish love-bite that draws blood, we understand that a disinterested caress is only quantitatively different from a disinterested flogging.

In the mythic schema of all relations between men and women, man proposes, and woman is disposed of.

If Miss means respectably unmarried, and Mrs. respectably married, then Ms. means nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Reciprocity of sensation is not possible because to share is to be robbed.

And each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin after successive skin, all the skins of a life in the world, and left behind a nascent patina of shining hairs. My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur.