Is O used by René and Sir Stephen, or does she in fact use them, and...all those irons and chains and obligatory debauchery, to fulfill her own dream-that is, her own destruction and death? And, in some surreptitious way, isn't she in charge of them? Doesn't she bend them to her will?

Woman ... is the divine object, violated, endlessly sacrificed yet always reborn, whose only joy, achieved through a subtle interplay of images, lies in contemplation of herself.

The voluntary captive The speechless the prisoner Which I hide in my very depths.

I wasn't young, I wasn't pretty, it was necessary to find other weapons.

Men are foolish to expect us to revere them, when, in the end, they amount to almost nothing.

O felt that her mouth was beautiful, since her lover condescended to thrust himself into it . . .

I wrote 'The story of O' alone, for Dominique Aury, to interest him, to please him, to occupy him. I wasn't young, nor particularly pretty. I needed something which might interest a man like him.