I have never been loved enough to gain the desire of reproducing a being in the image of my lover and I have never been given enough pleasure so that my brain has not had the leisure to seek better...I have wanted the impossible.

No, no, don't let my vulnerable heart share in this sacrifice to lust! Let him disgust me before pleasing me! Let him be what others have been, an instrument that I can break before becoming the echoes of its vibration.

A caprice is handled like a stew, and the pepper is added at the last minute.

I want a dress the color of suffering

The terrible poetry of human nudity, I understand it at last, I who tremble for the first time in trying to read it with blasé eyes.

It is true, Monsieur," Raoule went on, shrugging her shoulders, "that I have had lovers in my life as I have books in my library, to know, to study. But I have had no passion, I have not written my own book yet! I always found myself alone when we were two. One is not weak when one remains master of one's self in the midst of the most stupefying pleasures.

All monsters have their fits of depression.