[On swingers:] They have gone from Puritanism into promiscuity without passing through sensuality.

But one of the attributes of love, like art, is to bring harmony and order out of chaos, to introduce meaning and affect where before there was none, to give rhythmic variations, highs and lows to a landscape that was previously flat.

The big lie perpetrated on Western society is the idea of women’s inferiority, a lie so deeply ingrained in our social behaviour that merely to recognize it is to risk unravelling the entire fabric of civilization.

...(Charles) Reich discredits reason because it has been used to justify the war in Vietnam, which is like deciding that because your mother has cooked you a few bad meals you must never eat again.

There are very few heroines in literature who have defined their lives morally rather than romantically and likewise but a handful in film.

The thought that we are enduring the unendurable is one of the things that keeps us going.

American eroticism has always been of a different provenance and complexion than the European variety, an enjoyment both furtive and bland that is closer to a blushing cartoon than a sensual celebration.