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

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.

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 fact that he gave her was to him a proof, and ought to be one for her as well that she belonged to him: one can only give what belongs to you.

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?

I found that stiffly saluting member, of which he was so proud, rather frightening, and to tell the truth I found his pride slightly comical. I thought that that must be embarrassing for him, and thought how much more pleasant it was to be a girl. That, by the way, is an opinion I still hold today.