Who I am finally, if not the long silent part of someone, the secret and nocturnal part which has never betrayed itself in public by any thought, word, or deed, but communicates through subterranean depths of the imaginary with dreams as old as the world itself?

By my makeup and temperament I wasn't really prey to physical desires. Everything happened in my head.

You have to get past the pleasure stage, until you reach the stage of tears.

Finally a woman confesses! Confess what? What women never allowed themselves to confess. What men always criticized on them: they only obey the blood and everything is sex on them, even the spirit.

Lovers and mystics are familiar with this sense of grandeur, this taste of joy - in abandoning oneself to the will of others.

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.

I think that submissiveness can [be] and is a formidable weapon, which women will use as long as it isn't taken from them.