Every man--I know this--turns weak, pliant, ridiculous as soon as he's in love.

If I can't enjoy the full and total happiness of love, then I want to drain its torments, its tortures to the dregs; then I want the woman I love to mistreat me, betray me, and the more cruelly the better. That too is a pleasure.

Until then I had lived as I had painted and versified - that is, I never got far beyond priming canvas, beyond penning an outline, a first act, a first stanza. There are simply people who start all sorts of things and yet never finish any of them. And that was the kind of person I was.

The person who doesn't know how to subjugate will all too quickly feel the other's foot on the nape of his neck.

Watch out, I have a large, very large fur, with which I could cover you up entirely, and I have a mind to catch you in it as in a net.

Oh, you are the kind of man who will corrupt a woman to her very last fiber.

Venus in Furs has caught his soul in the red snares of hair. He will paint her, and go mad.