Sexual Activity Quotes

People define gay cinema solely by content: if there are gay characters in it, it's a gay film ... I think that's really simplistic. Heterosexuality to me is a structure as much as it is a content. It is an imposed structure that goes along with the patriarchal, dominant structure that constrains and defines society. If homosexuality is the opposite or counter-sexual activity to that, then what kind of a structure would it be? ~ Todd Haynes

Given the lack of sexual activity in your apartment and your refusal to take even one peek at my knickers, I'm curious if you've ever had sex before. I mean, I know you have a daughter but you hear about these virgin births all the time. ~ Karina Halle

You do not know what you are missing by your microscopic examination of sexual activity to the exclusion of aspects which are fuel that ignites it. Intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional. This is what gives sex its surprising textures, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements. You are shrinking your world of sensations. You are withering it, starving it, draining its blood. ~ Anais Nin

Sexual activity, for women, has a history of vulnerability, in a way it simply does not have for men. The mother has to teach thishidden text to her daughter. The mother's warnings, her attempts to halt sexual development in her daughter, are not so much signs of disapproval or envy, but of fear. ~ Terri E Apter

The disinhibition caused by said brain damage, can also spur the infected individual to seek the pleasure of compulsive, casual sexual activity ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Using porn to guide sexual activity, is like using Jackass to model behaviour. ~ Merlyn Gabriel Miller

Pessimism is a towering skyscraper eighty stories high in the suburbs of the soul at the end of a long avenue with waste ground on either side and a few poorly-stocked little shops. Several ultra-fast staircases give access to the building, running up from the cellars to the roof-gardens. The comfort of this place leaves nothing to be desired and only the greatest luxury is acceptable, but every Friday the residents gather on the ground floor to read from a bible bound in the skin of a blind man. The psalmic words they intone rise up through the pipes, sigh in the stoves and sweep the chimneys coated inside with black grease which leaves dirt on the skin. Water runs constantly in the bathrooms and the showers beat down on the numbered bodies, peppering them with sand. On Sundays the bed linen unrolls by itself and nobody makes love. For this tower block, like an obscure phallus scraping the vulva of the sky, is usually a hive of sexual activity. The most beautiful woman lives there, but no-one has ever known her. It is said, that dressed in furs and feathers, she keeps herself shut away in a first-floor apartment as if in a white safe. Her windows are scissors which cut short both shadow and breath. Her name is AURORA. ~ Michel Leiris

Too revved to sleep."
"Is that so?" Some of the light she loved was back in his eyes. "Well, what can we do to pass the time, help you relax? Cribbage, perhaps?"
Her eyes narrowed. "Cribbage? Is that some perverted sexual activity?"
He laughed, and grabbing her, tossed her onto the bed. "Why not? ~ J.D. Robb

Hollywood is controlled by homosexual Jewish men who expect favors in return for sexual activity. ~ John Travolta

The agenda in sexual activity, whether it's appropriate or not, has to do with lust, affection, passion, love, but the agenda in sexual harassment is not any of that. It is power, control, dominance. The tool is the same on both, but the agenda is completely different. That's what distinguishes the two. ~ Claudia Kennedy

Sexually-transmitted diseases is caused by sexual activity and promiscuity it spreads diseases. That's been known, you know, about 400 or 500 years, that somehow these diseases are spread. If fault comes with people because of their personal behavior but it isn't to be placed on a burden on other people, innocent people, why should they have to pay for the consequences? ~ Ron Paul

I always give books. And I always ask for books. I think you should reward people sexually for getting you books. Don't send a thank-you note, repay them with sexual activity. If the book is rare or by your favorite author or one you didn't know about, reward them with the most perverted sex act you can think of. Otherwise, you can just make out. ~ John Waters

Satanism condones any type of sexual activity which properly satisfies your individual desires- be it heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or even asexual, if you choose. Satanism also sanctions any fetish or deviation which will enhance your sex-life, so long as it involves no one who does not wish to be involved. ~ Anton Szandor LaVey

Even if an alcoholic is powerless over alcohol once it enters his body, he still makes a choice to drink. And, even if someone is attracted to a person of the same sex, he or she still makes a choice to engage in sexual activity with someone of the same gender. ~ Rick Perry

I see no room in holy Scripture for any sexual activity outside of matrimony. ~ George Carey

Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it's a cure. ~ Thomas Szasz

In other words, precisely because the ultimate goal is ... the redemption of the whole creation, our calling is to live in our bodies now in a way which anticipates the life we shall live then. Marital fidelity echoes and anticipates God's fidelity to the whole creation. Other kinds of sexual activity symbolize and embody the distortions and corruptions of the present world ~ N. T. Wright

Since the end of the postwar economic boom, certain strategies have been intensified to stimulate consumption, especially strategies aimed at American youth that project sexual activity as instant fulfillment and violence as the locus of machismo identity. This market activity has contributed greatly to the disorientation and confusion of American youth, and those with less education and fewer opportunities bear the brunt of this cultural chaos. ~ Cornel West

And so, when two Christians who are both members of the Body of Christ decide to engage into sexual activity then what you are really doing is you are having sex with Jesus. "If you have done it unto the least of these my brethren then you have done it unto me." That's gross you are having sex with Jesus. ~ Creflo A. Dollar

Often success goes hand-in-hand with the sum total of sexual activity in your life. ~ Stephen Richards

There's a lot of things that go on when you're on tour that cannot be controlled. I'm not even talking about myself, but of course there's sexual activity and drugs, fighting and language; it is certainly not a place to raise a family. ~ Peter Steele

If the Liberals' law is passed, will sex education in the schools, including elementary grades, include the same portrayals of sexual activity which presently exist in heterosexual instruction? Will there be the same presentation of homosexual activity? Of course there will. ~ Stockwell Day

All the accoutrements that distinguish us from animal existence were put in place when we had a different kind of mind than we have now. We didn't have a mind that favored role specialization, and male dominance, and anxiety over female sexual activity related to feelings of male ownership. That all came later. ~ Terence McKenna

Nothing about contraception should be taught in schools. There is no question that it will encourage sexual activity. ~ Phyllis Schlafly

Women demand a certain amount of cliteracy from men who dive in head first... ~ Virginia Alison

In other words, the most common problem now is not social taboos on sexual activity or guilt feeling about sex in itself, but the fact that sex for so many people is an empty, mechanical and vacuous experience. ~ Rollo May

Saying "yes" [to sexual activity] is a pretty low baseline for sexual experience and I wanted to write about what was happening to girls after "yes." ~ Peggy Orenstein

Not according to this," Jazz said, taking the report. "No evidence of sexual activity or anything like it."
"Well, there's that," Howie said, sounding relieved. Jazz wondered at that - was it really so much better to be unmolested, but still murdered in a horrible fashion? To die in pain and terror, stripped, left in a field, your fingers cut off? But as long as you weren't raped, well, that was alright, then? Did it really matter at that point? ~ Barry Lyga

Henry's recollections of the past, in contrast to Proust, are done while in movement. He may remember his first wife while making love to a whore, or he may remember his very first love while walking the streets, traveling to see a friend; and life does not stop while he remembers. Analysis in movement. No static vivisection. Henry's daily and continuous flow of life, his sexual activity, his talks with everyone, his cafe life, his conversations with people in the street, which I once considered an interruption to writing, I now believe to be a quality which distinguishes him from other writers. He never writes in cold blood: he is always writing in white heat.
It is what I do with the journal, carrying it everywhere, writing on cafe tables while waiting for a friend, on the train, on the bus, in waiting rooms at the station, while my hair is washed, at the Sorbonne when the lectures get tedious, on journeys, trips, almost while people are talking.
It is while cooking, gardening, walking, or love-making that I remember my childhood, and not while reading Freud's 'Preface to a Little Girl's Journal. ~ Anais Nin

I would say any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military. ~ Rick Santorum

The concept of romantic love affords a means of emotional manipulation which the male is free to exploit, since love is the only circumstance in which the female is (ideologically) pardoned for sexual activity. ~ Kate Millett

If anybody wants to engage in any kind of sexual activity with any consenting partner, that is their business. Anybody can do anything they damn well please, as long as the relationship isn't exploitive. And I don't feel that legality should have anything to do with it. There are certain bodily functions of mine which I will not allow to be supervised. ~ Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Did people ... really kiss like that? She had had NO idea. She had imagined being kissed, and in her imagination she had been swept away by the sheer romance of the meeting of lips. In her naivete she had not considered the possibility that a kiss, as a prelude to sexual activity, might have powerful effects on parts of her body, in fact, even parts she had been only half aware of possessing. She ached and throbbed in all sorts of unfamiliar places ~ Mary Balogh

There is nothing more boring, anyway, than sexual activity as an end in itself, and a great many people who came out of the closet should reconsider. ~ James Baldwin

in the past fifty years people in many Western societies have come to feel compassion in response to many more kinds of animal suffering, and they've come to feel disgust in response to many fewer kinds of sexual activity. The current triggers can change in a single generation, even though it would take many generations for genetic evolution to alter the design of the module and its original triggers. ~ Anonymous

In the Jewish tradition of the Bible it says, "Speak to her softly, so that she will want to engage in sexual activity." In today's world, there's a little bit of a danger in that people don't really talk to each other. You see couples walking in the street, each one of them texting someone else. That worries me. ~ Ruth Westheimer

My sexual activity was all with animals. First there were the hens, then the goats and the sows, and after I had grown up some more, the mares. ~ Reinaldo Arenas

I'm a Christian woman, but I believe in human rights. I do not go into people's bedrooms. I appoint people based on their capabilities, not their sexual orientation. ~ Portia Simpson-Miller

Marital faithfulness involves more than just sexual fidelity. Being faithful to your wife also means defending her and affirming her beauty, intelligence, and integrity at all times, particularly before other people. Faithfulness to your husband means sticking up for him, always building him up and never tearing him down. Marital fidelity means that your spouse's health, happiness, security, and welfare take a higher place in your life than anything else except your own relationship with the Lord. ~ Myles Munroe

Creativity is utilizing both sides of the brain simultaneously - creative + activity. ~ Pearl Zhu

It is better to conquer our grief than to deceive it. For if it has withdrawn, being merely beguiled by pleasures and preoccupations, it starts up again and from its very respite gains force to savage us. But the grief that has been conquered by reason is calmed for ever. I am not therefore going to prescribe for you those remedies which I know many people have used, that you divert or cheer yourself by a long or pleasant journey abroad, or spend a lot of time carefully going through your accounts and administering your estate, or constantly be involved in some new activity. All those things help only for a short time; they do not cure grief but hinder it. But I would rather end it than distract it. ~ Seneca

Instead of being lost in your thinking, when you awaken you recognize yourself as the awareness behind it. Thinking then ceases to be a self-serving autonomous activity that takes possession of you and runs your life. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Make a freaking impact and start providing value! Let money come to you! Look around outside your world, stop being selfish, and help your fellow humans solve their problems. In a world of selfishness, become unselfish.

Need something more concrete? No problem.
Make 1 million people achieve any of the following:
Make them feel better.
Help them solve a problem.
Educate them.
Make them look better (health, nutrition, clothing, makeup).
Give them security (housing, safety, health).
Raise a positive emotion (love, happiness, laughter, self-confidence).
Satisfy appetites, from basic (food) to the risqué (sexual).
Make things easier.
Enhance their dreams and give hope.
… and I guarantee, you will be worth millions. ~ M.J. DeMarco

Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity. ~ Will Durant

It is recognised now that Freud never gave proper attention, even in man, to growth of the ego or self: 'the impulse to master, control or come to self-fulfilling terms with the environment'. Analysts who have freed themselves from Freud's bias and joined other behavioural scientists in studying the human need, and that interference with it, in any dimension, is the source of psychic trouble. The sexual is only one dimension of the human potential. Freud saw women only in terms of their sexual relationship with men. But in all those women in whom he saw sexual problems, there must have been very severe problems of blocked growth, growth short of full human identity -- an immature, incomplete self. Society as it was then, by explicit denial of education and independence, prevented women from realising their full potential, or from attaining those interests and ideals that might stimulated their growth. Freud reported these deficiencies, but could only explain them as the toll of 'penis envy'. He saw that women who secretly hungered to be man's equal would not enjoy being his object; and in this, he seemed to be describing a fact. But when he dismissed woman's yearning for equality as 'penis envy', was he not merely stating his own view that woman could never really be man's equal, any more than she could wear his penis? ~ Betty Friedan

Food, like sex, is one of the principal kinds of human activity that engage people when they wonder about how to account for different kinds of human behaviour. ~ Marvin Harris

Have you ever wanted something very badly-something that was within your grasp-and yet you were afraid to reach out for it?
That night he had answered no. Tonight he would have said yes. Among other things, he wanted to know where she was; a month ago he'd told himself it was because he wanted the divorce petition served. Tonight he was too exhausted from his long internal battle to bother lying to himself anymore. He wanted to know where she was because he needed to know. His grandfather claimed not to know; his uncle and Alexandra both know, but they'd both refused to tell him, and he hadn't pressed them.
Wearily, Ian leaned his head against the back of his chair and closed his eyes, but he wouldn't sleep, and he knew it, even though it was three o'clock in the morning. He never slept anymore unless he'd either had a day of grueling physical activity or drunk enough brandy to knock himself out. And even when he did, he laid awake, wanting her, and knowing-because she'd told him-that she was somewhere out there, lying awake, wanting him.
A faint smile touched his lips as he remembered her standing in the witness box, looking heartbreakingly young and beautiful, first trying logically to explain to everyone what had happened-and when that failed, playing the part of an incorrigible henwit. Ian chuckled, as he'd been doing whenever he thought of her that day. Only Elizabeth would have dared to take on the entire House of Lords-and when she couldn't sway them wit ~ Judith McNaught

Here we are not just referring to the behavioral outcomes of brain activity, such as movement and speech. We are including the intimate contents of unspoken thoughts, untold dreams, and never executed intentions. ~ Giorgio A Ascoli

I sure wasn't going to ask Aunt Sally, because if she told me once that getting your period was like a moth becoming a butterfly, she'd probably say that sexual intercourse was like a deer getting antlers or something. ~ Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

I had never thought of haiku, or any kind of poetry for that matter, as a social activity. ~ Abigail Friedman

He looked up and down the block. Every house seemed identical except for the respective paint job. Every home had a screened-in pool. Ah, Florida. What was life like with summer all year long? He wiped sweat from his forehead and put his nose to his armpits, immediately deciding that fall, winter or spring weren't so bad. ~ Mark M. Bello

I don't try to hide sex in my music. Music is very sexual. I don't hide it. ~ Rick James

I'm constantly fighting with my manager to reduce the amount of time I have to spend on promotional activities, so I can get back in the studio and work on new music. ~ Rivers Cuomo

The prediction of false rape-related beliefs (rape myth acceptance [RMA]) was examined using the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (Payne, Lonsway, & Fitzgerald, 1999) among a nonclinical sample of 258 male and female college students. Predictor variables included measures of attitudes toward women, gender role identity (GRI), sexual trauma history, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity. Using linear regression and testing interaction effects, negative attitudes toward women significantly predicted greater RMA for individuals without a sexual trauma history.
However, neither attitudes toward women nor GRI were significant predictors of RMA for individuals with a sexual trauma history."
Rape Myth Acceptance, Sexual Trauma History, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Shannon N. Baugher, PhD,
Jon D. Elhai, PhD,
James R. Monroe, PhD, Ruth Dakota, Matt J. Gray, PhD ~ Shannon N. Baugher

I like how Dallas Willard put it: "We don't believe something by merely saying we believe it," he said, "or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true." So perhaps a better question than "Do I believe in miracles?" is "Am I acting like I do?" Am I including the people who are typically excluded? Am I feeding the hungry and caring for the sick? Am I holding the hands of the homeless and offering help to addicts? Am I working to break down religious and political barriers that marginalize ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities and people with disabilities? Am I behaving as though life is more than a meaningless, chaotic mess, that there is some order in the storm? ~ Rachel Held Evans

Johnson seemed to have a playbook memorized. He mumbled things like, "Pleasure, apply pressure, female gratification." And bent her legs to accomplish some pretty spectacular sexual Twister poses. One in particular had Dove ratcheted up like a street dancer with twenty years' experience. ~ Debra Anastasia

Embracing a different vocabulary, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has described a highly sought-after affective state called the flow state or flow experience. In such intrinsically motivating experiences, which can occur in any domain of activity, people report themselves as fully engaged with and absorbed by the object of their attention. In one sense, those "in flow" are not conscious of the experience at the moment; on reflection, however, such people feel that they have been fully alive, totally realized, and involved in a "peak experience." Individuals who regularly engage in creative activities often report that they seek such states; the prospect of such "periods of flow" can be so intense that individuals will exert considerable practice and effort, and even tolerate physical or psychological pain, in pursuit thereof. Committed writers may claim that they hate the time spent chained to their desks, but the thought that they would not have the opportunity to attain occasional periods of flow while writing proves devastating. ~ Howard Gardner

Intellectual activity is perhaps the greatest pleasure of life; chess is one of the forms of intellectual activity. ~ Siegbert Tarrasch

The practice of women being liable to seek, wholesale and as a feminist entitlement, the 'liberty' of laying themselves open to abuse of a sexual, physical, spiritual and psychological nature from men exists only in the minds of those who do not (or will not) grasp the basic premise of feminism, which is the liberation of women, followed by the promotion of female equality, sexual self-governance included. Sexual self-governance is only possible for anyone where they are not influenced to make decisions regarding their sexuality based on circumstances beyond their control. Quite clearly, the necessary conditions for authentic sexual autonomy do not exist in the prostitution experience. ~ Rachel Moran

Between 60 and 80 percent of strippers come from a background of sexual abuse. ~ Caitlin Moran

You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as thoughts, but it will always be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you can become aware. ~ Eckhart Tolle

In an era of weaponized sensitivity, participation in public discourse is growing so perilous, so fraught with the danger of being caught out for using the wrong word or failing to uphold the latest orthodoxy in relation to disability, sexual orientation, economic class, race or ethnicity, that many are apt to bow out. Perhaps intimidating their elders into silence is the intention of the identity-politics cabal - and maybe my generation should retreat to our living rooms and let the young people tear one another apart over who seemed to imply that Asians are good at math. ~ Lionel Shriver

But no matter how much evil I see, I think it's important for everyone to understand that there is much more light than darkness. ~ Robert Uttaro

Every night that he watched over her sleeping form, his urge to protect and take care of her grew. And those weren't the only urges. When she'd throw back the blanket and bare her long legs, it was all he could do not to kneel at her feet, kiss her slim ankles, and slip his hands up her smooth thighs. ~ Amber Belldene

There is no significant difference between human activities and those by amoebas and even bacteria, well, on the GRAND SCALE. ~ Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov

Something unexpected seemed to clear away between us, and, for a second, it seemed there was absolutely no difference in age between us, just two men kissing, and even this seemed to dissolve, as I began to feel we were not even two men, just two beings. ~ Andre Aciman

Make sure your goal is not focused on having this or that, such as a mansion by the sea, your own company, or ten million dollars in the bank. An enlarged image of yourself or a vision of yourself having this or that are all static goals and therefore don't empower you. Instead, make sure your goals are dynamic, that is to say, point toward an activity that you are engaged in and through which you are connected to other human beings as well as to the whole. Instead of seeing yourself as a famous actor and writer and so on, see yourself inspiring countless people with your work and enriching their lives. Feel how that activity enriches or deepens not only your life but that of countless others. ~ Eckhart Tolle

I don't think that loneliness is necessarily a bad or unconstructive condition. My own skill at jamming time may actually be dependent on some fluid mixture of emotions, among them curiosity, sexual desire, and love, all suspended in a solvent medium of loneliness. I like the heroes or heroines of books I read to be living alone, and feeling lonely, because reading is itself a state of artificially enhanced loneliness. Loneliness makes you consider other people's lives, makes you more polite to those you deal with in passing, dampens irony and cynicism. The interior of the Fold is, of course, the place of ultimate loneliness, and I like it there. But there are times when the wish for others' voices, for friendliness returned, reaches unpleasant levels, and becomes a kind of immobilizing pain. That was how it felt as I finished packing up the box of sex machines. ~ Nicholson Baker

Homosexuality is against nature. Sexual expression is permitted only within marriage, between man and woman, male and female. Anything else is an abnormality and is against nature. ~ Pope Shenouda III

At a time when painting itself often seems to be a threatened, even despised, form of artistic activity, Andrew Salgado emerges as a dazzlingly skillful advocate for the medium he has chosen to embrace. ~ Edward Lucie-Smith

There's no such thing as sustainability. There are just levels of it. It's a process, not a real goal. All you can do is work toward it. There's no such thing as any sustainable economy. The only thing I know that's even close to sustainable economic activity would be organic farming on a very small scale or hunting and gathering on a very small scale. And manufacturing, you end up with way more waste than you end up with finished product. It's totally unsustainable. It's just the way it is. ~ Yvon Chouinard

The average sexual intercourse lasts sixteen point to minutes," he says, breaking the spell.

"That's long."

"I can't believe it either, but that's what the medical literature says. ~ Michael Ampersant

Intercourse was now forbidden to everyone but married people; bundling disappeared. In its place young courting couples engaged in "petting"
which, interpreted broadly, meant that they were could do anything sexual short of intercourse. Women were now held responsible for controlling men's beastly sexuality
halting them from simply plunging ahead
at the same time that they were expected to be sexually innocent: an impossible position. ~ Leora Tanenbaum

Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime
and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis. ~ Sigmund Freud

Trust is the one thing that affects everything else you're doing. It's a performance multiplier which takes your trajectory upwards, for every activity you engage in, from strategy to execution. ~ Stephen Covey

To the other person, who looks at me from the outside, I seem an object, a thing; my subjectivity with its inner freedom escapes his gaze. Hence, his tendency is always to convert me into the object he sees. The gaze of the other penetrates the depths of my existence, freezes and congeals it. It is this, according to Sartre, that turns love and particularly sexual love into a perpetual tension and indeed warfare. The lover wishes to possess the beloved, by the freedom of the beloved (which is his or her human essence) cannot be possessed; hence, the lover tends to reduce the beloved to an object for the sake of possessing it. Love is menaced always by a perpetual oscillation between sadism and masochism: In sadism I reduce the other to a mere lump, to be beaten and manipulated as I choose, while in masochism I offer myself as an object, but in an attempt to entrap the other and undermine his freedom. ~ William Barrett

When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy. ~ Ben Hecht

The challenges we face when it comes to identity and choice exist precisely because choosing is not only a private activity but a social one, a negotiation between many moving parts. Choice requires us to think more deeply about who we are, both within ourselves and in the eyes of others. ~ Sheena Iyengar

One such question revolved around the informal institution of black kids eating together in the cafeteria. I'm going to let you in on a secret: growing black children like to eat. In a majority-white school, they are often friends with other black people. This has been known to result in black kids eating together at the same table. While this terrorist cell–like activity is a perceived clear and present danger to some in the non-black community, the agenda at most of these nefarious, exclusive gatherings consisted of talking about classes, flirting, making fun of each other, and, oh, plotting the downfall of White America - but only on every third Tuesday. ~ Baratunde R. Thurston

The intellect searches out the Absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God, and without the colors of affection. The intellectual and the active powers seem to succeed each other, and the exclusive activity of the one generates the exclusive activity of the other. There is something unfriendly in each to the other, but they are like the alternate periods of feeding and working in animals; each prepares and will be followed by the other. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I first started to remember specific memories of abuse, I felt like I had a storm cloud over me for about two or three days beforehand. When the memory finally surfaced, I felt like I was alone in a dark cave. I stayed in bed just thinking and crying and eating chocolate. I wrote in my healing journal and talked it out with a friend. I examined what I thought and how I felt and cried some more. It was agonizing. The more issues I faced, the stronger I got. It wasn't a pleasant process, but I knew it would be over in a few days and I would feel alive again. With each memory, I recovered faster and I had longer and longer breaks in between them. Facing them made me stronger. I was able to see more and more of the truth without it overwhelming me. Even though the memories increased in intensity, it was easier to deal with them. ~ Christina Enevoldsen

We easily enough confess in others an advantage of courage, strength, experience, activity, and beauty; but an advantage in judgment we yield to none. ~ Michel De Montaigne

All kids want such glamorous knowledge. The darkness of it. The hardness of it. The realness of it. The cold fact that life really is fucked. And Sarah, with her Morrissey T-shirts and her unfiltered Camels and her sleep deprivation and her willful compliance with sexual hungers, she's been asking for this awful dispossession, with one mind she's been hot on its trail, and now that she's got it she longs to go back. If she could only go back, and eat the sandwich her mother packed her, with its thoughtful tomato. ~ Susan Choi

And my own affairs were as bad, as dismal, as the day I had been born. The only difference was that now I could drink now and then, though never often enough. Drink was the only thing that kept a man from feeling forever stunned and useless. Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought. God, they all had assholes and sexual organs and their mouths and their armpits. They shit and they chattered and they were dull as horse dung. The girls looked good from a distance, the sun shining through their dresses, their hair. But get up close and listen to their minds running out of their mouths, you felt like digging in under a hill and hiding out with a tommy-gun. I would certainly never be able to be happy, to get married, I could never have children. Hell, I couldn't even get a job as a dishwasher. ~ Charles Bukowski

Continuing sexual interest and perfect sexual adjustment between partners who have been together for thirty years is so difficult and rare that no one should feel guilty or inadequate for not having managed it. ~ Germaine Greer