Sperm Quotes

Similarly deadly to small wriggling cells, if a bit more quackish, is vanadium, element twenty-three, which also has a curious side effect in males: vanadium is the best spermicide ever devised. Most spermicides dissolve the fatty membrane that surrounds sperm cells, spilling their guts all over. Unfortunately, all cells have fatty membranes, so spermicides often irritate the lining of the vagina and make women susceptible to yeast infections. Not fun. Vanadium eschews any messy dissolving and simply cracks the crankshaft on the sperm's tails. The tails then snap off, leaving ~ Sam Kean

The human egg is a Mrs. Bennet, desperate to marry off her daughters ... It is a truth universally acknowledged that a sperm must be in want of a matching strand of DNA. ~ Daryl Gregory

You could be born into love or rejection, into want or abundance,although life itself was certainly not to blame. The vital principle did its job when it united egg and sperm; it was people who created the conditions in which life followed its course. And human beings seemed marked by destiny to trample one another, to make life difficult for one another, to kill one another. ~ Gioconda Belli

But that was the way life worked. Every human being was the result of a million different factors mixing together -- one of a million sperm arriving at the egg at exactly a certain time; even a millisecond off, and another entirely different person would result. Good things and bad--every friendship and romance formed, every accident, every illness--resulted from the conspiracy of hundreds of little things, in and of themselves inconsequential. ~ Angie Kim

The indigestible parts of giant squid, in particular their beaks, accumulate in sperm whales' stomachs into the substance known as ambergris, which is used as a fixative in perfumes. The next time you spray on Chanel Number 5 (assuming you do), you may wish to reflect that you are dousing yourself in distillate of unseen sea monster. ~ Bill Bryson

An enormous round egg snatching and castrating the agile sperm;
monstorous and stuffed, the queen termite reigning over the servile
males; the praying mantis and the spider, gorged on love, crushing
their partners and gobbling them up; the dog in heat running through
back alleys, leaving perverse smells in her wake; the monkey showing
herself off brazenly, sneaking away with flirtatious hypocrisy. And
the most splendid wildcats, the tigress, lioness, and panther, lie
down slavishly under the male's imperial embrace, inert, impatient,
shrewd, stupid, insensitive, lewd, fierce, and humiliated ~ Simone De Beauvoir

That's all women need men for? Sperm, a paycheck, and free flights? ~ Nicki Elson

I suspect that I am the result of particularly weak conception on the part of my father. His sperm was probably emitted in a rather offhand manner. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale been known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified by their child-magian thoughts. They deified the crocodile of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods of old; and livingly enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky; in the now unhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted to Jove's high seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it. ~ Herman Melville

Aphrodite then reminded Zeus what Themis had said. She had to swallow a whole amphora full of his seed before Eros & Chaos would let her girdle hang free. And she said that she looked forward to swallowing his seed, if he would let her. Zeus then took the young Goddess in his arms & told her that he would even willingly give her a whole amphora full of his blood if that would make her happy. He would like to give her all the seed that his sperm sacs could produce each day but only wished that the transaction did not have to go through Hera. ~ Nicholas Chong

Few chemicals confer maleness, but many take it away. Which, if any, are responsible for our own troubles is hard to say.

The Pill changed men's lives in more ways than one. It caused reproductive hormones to leak into tap water and has been blamed both for the sex changes in freshwater fish and for the drop in our own sperm count. The jury is still out on the issue, but other hormones have had a disastrous effect. A drug called diethylstilbestrol was once thought - in error - to prevent miscarriage. Five million mothers took it and for a time it was even used as a chicken food supplement. A third of the boys exposed to the drug in the womb suffer from small testes or a reduced penis. In rats, the chemical causes prostate and testicular cancer (although there is as yet no sign of those problems in ourselves).
To give a powerful steroid to pregnant women was at best unwise, but the effects of other chemicals were harder to foresee. The 1950s saw a wonderful new chemical treatment for banana pests. Soon the substance was much used. Twenty years later the workers noticed something odd: they had almost no children. Their sperm count had dropped by five hundred times. ~ Steve Jones

The great Sea God,Poseidon, could not be more pleased with himself.Although he had lost to the young Goddess, he had really won.In theory,his manhood now belonged to Aphrodite,but whenever he visited her cave,he was made to feel even more of a king than in his own palace.All the lovely Goddesses of Olympus came to pay homage to his phallus & would, afterwards, help him to empty his sperm sacs. ~ Nicholas Chong

Depending on which frothy-mouthed Internet pulpit-beater I chose to believe, Holzter Point might conceal anything from alien artifacts to Bigfoot's sperm samples, plus a few pickled flipper babies from Three Mile Island and Jimmy Hoffa's stomach contents. I'd like to make fun of those guys, but I had information from a blind vampire that the storage facility held details of medical experiments conducted by the military on the unwilling undead. So far be it from me to call anyone nuts. ~ Cherie Priest

They said that Superman was faster than a speeding train. If that's the case, how fast were his sperm and would Lois survive?
It makes you think, doesn't it? ~ Anthony T. Hincks

It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells ... to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin. ~ Dave Barry

When you watch a TV show or a movie, what you see looks like what it physically represents. A man looks like a man, a man with a large bicep looks like a man with a large bicep, and a man with a large bicep bearing the tattoo "Mama" looks like a man with a large bicep bearing the tattoo "Mama."

But when you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create. It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book become one of a million different books, just as an egg becomes one of potentially a million different people when it's approached by a hard-swimming and frisky school of sperm. ~ Mohsin Hamid

It takes 25 years or so for a male sperm whale to reach the edge of social maturity, when it attains the size and weight of those I saw being butchered. It took less than four hours to transform those once vibrant creatures into the basic ingredients of candle wax, lubricating oils, cosmetics, fertilizer, ivory trinkets, and food for domesticated animals. ~ Sylvia Earle

My daughter's eggs are silver points of potential energy, the light at the beginning of the tunnel, a near-life experience. Boys don't make sperm - their proud "seed" - until they reach puberty. But my daughter's sex cells, our seed, are already settled upon prenatally, the chromosomes sorted, the potsherds of her parents' histories packed into their little phospholipid baggies. ~ Natalie Angier

We are not the ones driving the boat of our behavior, at least not nearly as much as we believe. Who we are runs well below the surface of our conscious access, and the details reach back in time before our birth, when the meeting of a sperm and egg granted us with certain attributes and not others. Who we can be begins with our molecular blueprints - a series of alien codes penned in invisibly small strings of acids - well before we have anything to do with it. We are a product of our inaccessible, microscopic history. ~ David Eagleman

The Drunken Fisherman"

Wallowing in this bloody sty,
I cast for fish that pleased my eye
(Truly Jehovah's bow suspends
No pots of gold to weight its ends);
Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout
Rose to my bait. They flopped about
My canvas creel until the moth
Corrupted its unstable cloth.

A calendar to tell the day;
A handkerchief to wave away
The gnats; a couch unstuffed with storm
Pouching a bottle in one arm;
A whiskey bottle full of worms;
And bedroom slacks: are these fit terms
To mete the worm whose molten rage
Boils in the belly of old age?

Once fishing was a rabbit's foot--
O wind blow cold, O wind blow hot,
Let suns stay in or suns step out:
Life danced a jig on the sperm-whale's spout--
The fisher's fluent and obscene
Catches kept his conscience clean.
Children, the raging memory drools
Over the glory of past pools.

Now the hot river, ebbing, hauls
Its bloody waters into holes;
A grain of sand inside my shoe
Mimics the moon that might undo
Man and Creation too; remorse,
Stinking, has puddled up its source;
Here tantrums thrash to a whale's rage.
This is the pot-hole of old age.

Is there no way to cast my hook
Out of this dynamited brook?
The Fisher's sons must cast about
When shallow waters peter out.
I will catch Christ with a greased worm,
And when ~ Robert Lowell

But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence.
(Moby Dick Chapter lxxix p345) ~ Herman Melville

Being a laborer with one hand is about as useful as being a sperm donor with one nut. ~ Devon McCormack

But Zeus did not tell Aphrodite that age was catching up on him. And that Gods, just as Mortal men, suffered from Erectile Dysfunction. And that the daily harvesting of his sperm sacs by Hera & Themis in order to provide three amphoras full of seed had not helped.
And that thus, he, just as all those who suffered from Erectile Dysfunction, actually preferred catching oysters & eating them rather than deflowering the owners of the oysters. And thus, the Big Crunch that had been planned, now risked becoming the Big Bathos, the Big Let Down. ~ Nicholas Chong

Uh," said Ash from the door, "are you - all right?"

"Fine!" Kami said. She typed out: "With the advent of sperm banks, women realized the sheer uselessness of men, and by the year 2100 they were largely extinct" with extreme force. "Absolutely fine, never better! Why do you ask?"

"Er, because I heard you and Jared had a screaming fight. Also, you are typing like a maddened weasel taped to a keyboard."

Kami stopped typing. "You may have a point. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

Stupid werewolf ninja sperm. ~ Molly Harper

[ ... ] Deep within, her female organs began to contract and release. She felt the path of his seed and now in her mind she could see a golden trail. How was this even possible? Dear God, how was any of this even possible?
Now she could see the chrysalis of her genetic material, a bright burning light at the end of a tunnel. The imagery made her smile then laugh. She could see his sperm, like lightning [ ... ] If his DNA wanted to make a child, why wouldn't it move at an accelerated rate?
She felt the moment when her egg received his sperm and their child began all the fantastic portentous crazy cell replications. [ ... ] ~ Caris Roane

He sounds like kind of a hacker. Which makes his nam-shub very difficult to
understand. If he was such a nice guy, why did he do the Babel thing?"
"This is considered to be one of the mysteries of Enki. As you have noticed,
his behavior was not always consistent with modern norms."
"I don't buy that. I don't think he actually fucked his sister, daughter, and
so on. That story has to be a metaphor for something else. I think it is a
metaphor for some kind of recursive informational process. This whole myth
stinks of it. To these people, water equals semen. Makes sense, because they
probably had no concept of pure water -- it was all brown and muddy and full of
viruses anyway. But from a modern standpoint, semen is just a carrier of
information -- both benevolent sperm and malevolent viruses. Enki's water --
his semen, his data, his me -- flow throughout the country of Sumer and cause it
to flourish."
"As you may be aware, Sumer existed on the floodplain between two major rivers,
the Tigris and the Euphrates. This is where all the clay came from -- they took
it directly from the riverbeds."
"So Enki even provided them with their medium for conveying information -- clay.
They wrote on wet clay and then they dried it out -- got rid of the water. If
water got to it later, the information was destroyed. But if they baked it and
drove out all the water, sterilized Enki's semen with heat, t ~ Neal Stephenson

Nobody can remember when the sperm became large enough to see, but we agree on this: once that point was reached, every generation topped the last. They went from guppy to goldfish, and before long they could frighten a schnauzer, and not much later even Great Danes made way for them....
Sperm are ancient creatures, single-minded as coelacanths. They are drawn to the sun, the moon, and dots and disks of all descriptions, including periods, stop signs, and stars. They worship at nail heads, doorknobs and tennis balls. More than one life has been saved by a penny tossed in the air. ~ Shelley Jackson

Sperm Bank Accounts
I went to a sperm bank
and asked them if I could open a
day-of-deposit day-of-withdrawal account.
Instead the dickheads froze my account on account
they thought I was being a wiseass. ~ Beryl Dov

Perhaps eggs are like neurons, which also are not replenished in adulthood: they know too much. Eggs must plan the party. Sperm need only to show up- wearing top hat and tails, of course. ~ Natalie Angier

Before you were born, and were still too tiny for the human eye to see, you won the race for life from among 250 million competitors. And yet, how fast you have forgotten your strength, when your very existence is proof of your greatness. ~ Suzy Kassem

The key trait of a Sperm Pirate is that she is not driven by desperation. Escaping poverty or hardship is not her motive. She usually has a good education and access to the same opportunities as the man she tries to trap. However, she understands that it is more efficient to enjoy a lavish lifestyle through the sweat of another's labour. But the Sperm Pirate is acutely aware that the infatuation of a hormonal man has a brief shelf life. This poor collateral must be cashed in before it expires. A pregnancy is the best way to convert this volatile resource into a stable asset. Babies are reliable insurance policies. They create legal obligations for financial support, even when the sweet milk of passion turns sour. ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

Think about yourself.
You are here because...
Your dad met your mom.
Then your dad and mom conceived you.
So a particular egg in your mom
Joined a particular sperm from your dad
Which could only happen because not one of your direct ancestors, going all the way back to the beginning of life itself, died before passing on his or her genes...
So what are the chances of you happening?
Of you being here?

Author and blogger Dr. Ali Binazir did the calculations last spring and decided that the chances of anyone existing are one in 102,685,000. In other words, as this infographic figures it, you are totally improbable. ~ Robert Krulwich

Because one must produce,
one must by all possible means of activity replace nature wherever it can be replaced,
one must find a major field of action for human inertia,
the worker must have something to keep him busy,
new fields of activity must be created,
in which we shall see at last the reign
of all the fake manufactured products,
of all the vile synthetic substitutes
in which beautiful real nature has no part,
and must give way finally and shamefully
before all the victorious
substitute products
in which the sperm
of all the artificial insemination factories
will make a miracle
in order to produce armies and battleships.

No more fruit, no more trees, no more vegetables, no more plants pharmaceutical or otherwise
and consequently no more food,
but synthetic products to satiety,
amid the fumes,
amid the special humors of the atmosphere,
on the particular axes of atmospheres wrenched violently and synthetically from the resistances of a nature which has known nothing of war except fear.

And war is wonderful, isn't it?
For it's war, isn't it, that the Americans have been preparing for
and are preparing for this way step by step.
In order to defend this senseless manufacture from all competition
that could not fail to arise on all sides,
one must have soldiers, armies, airplanes, battleships,
hence this sperm
w ~ Antonin Artaud

Until the first petroleum well was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859, whale oil *was* oil. In Leviathan, a fine history of whaling, Eric Jay Dolin enumerates whale Phil's manifold applications: 'It was used in the production of soap, textiles, leather, paints, and varnishes, and it lubricated the tools and machines that drove the Industrial Revolution.' In fact, its use as a lubricant impervious to extremes in temperature persisted well into the space age
NASA lubed its moon landers and other remotely operated vehicles with sperm whale oil until the International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling in 1986. ~ Sarah Vowell

The expenditure of paper and printer ink had been somewhat lavish. Two generations from now, if any humans survived, they would look on this heap of documents with some combination of disgust and amazement. Because paper was going to be scarce by then, and they would view its use for such purposes in roughly the same way as Americans of the twenty-first century had viewed the use of sperm whale oil to fuel streetlamps. ~ Neal Stephenson

But the only thing to be considered here, is this - what kind of oil is used in coronations? Certainly it cannot be Olive Oil, or Maccasar Oil, nor Caster Oil, nor Bear's Oil, nor Train Oil, nor Cod-Liver Oil. What then can it possibly be but Sperm Oil in it's unmanufactured unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils? ~ Herman Melville

Yeah, Aiden, I'm scared." I start crying. "I really want a baby. I really am excited to be pregnant. But I don't want to disappoint you. I don't want to screw it up. I don't know how to be pregnant. What if I'm not good at it?" He kisses me and wipes my tears. "Shh, baby. I promise, no matter what happens, you won't ever disappoint me." He kisses my nose then grins at me. "If something happens, it will be my fault." "What do you mean?" "Faulty sperm. ~ Jillian Dodd

I swore I'd never become some lord's brainless arm ornament and political host, but I've become far worse. I'm a glorified housekeeper and sperm donor.
-from the journal of Payton Marcus Townsend. ~ J.L. Langley

The hills below crouched on all fours under the weight of the rainforest where liana grew and soldier ants marched in formation. Straight ahead they marched, shamelessly single-minded, for soldier ants have no time for dreaming. Almost all of them are women and there is so much to do - the work is literally endless. So many to be born and fed, then found and buried. There is no time for dreaming. The life of their world requires organization so tight and sacrifice so complete there is little need for males and they are seldom produced. When they are needed, it is deliberately done by the queen who surmises, by some four-million-year-old magic she is heiress to, that it is time. So she urges a sperm from the private womb where they were placed when she had her one, first and last copulation. Once in life, this little Amazon trembled in the air waiting for a male to mount her. And when he did, when he joined a cloud of others one evening just before a summer storm, joined colonies from all over the world gathered fro the marriage flight, he knew at last what his wings were for. Frenzied, he flied into the humming cloud to fight gravity and time in order to do, just once, the single thing he was born for. Then he drops dead, having emptied his sperm into his lady-love. Sperm which she keeps in a special place to use at her own discretion when there is need for another dark and singing cloud of ant folk mating in the air. Once the lady has collected the sperm, she too falls to th ~ Toni Morrison

By now it's got as much in common with its origins as a humpback whale would have with the sperm cells from a therapsid lizard. Still, ~ Peter Watts

I tell you, the sperm whale will stand no nonsense. ~ Herman Melville

My sperm came out into the water, unaccustomed to the light, and instantly it became a misty, stringy kind of thing and swirled out like a falling star, and I saw a dead fish come forward and float into my sperm, bending it in the middle. ~ Richard Brautigan

As we still ascend from shelf to shelf, we find the tenants of the tower serially disposed in order of their magnitude: gannets, black and speckled haglets, jays, sea hens, sperm-whale birds, gulls of all varieties -- thrones, princedoms, powers, dominating one above another in senatorial array; while, sprinkled over all, like an ever-repeated fly in a great piece of broidery, the stormy petrel or Mother Cary's chicken sounds his continual challenge and alarm. ~ Herman Melville

Though the only spout in sight was that of a Fin-Back, belonging to the species of uncapturable whales, because of its incredible power of swimming. Nevertheless, the Fin-Back's spout is so similar to the Sperm Whale's, that by unskilful fishermen it is often mistaken for it. And consequently Derick and all his host were now in valiant chase of this unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all sail, made after her four young keels, and thus they all disappeared far to leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase.
Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend. ~ Herman Melville

Love dries up, I thought
as I walked back to the
bathroom, even faster
than sperm. ~ Charles Bukowski

What exactly do you want to sue her for? Kidnapping?" He brightened. "I hadn't thought of that. Sure. Kidnapping, but mostly theft." Jill had a bad feeling she didn't want to know, but she had to ask. "Theft of what?" "Buck's sperm. She was always after me to have him mate with her damn dog and I refused. So when her dog went into heat, she kidnapped him and locked those two together for three damn days. She could have killed him. ~ Susan Mallery

In hunter-gatherer times, [the amount of energy human beings use each day] was about 2,500 calories, all of it food. That is the daily energy intake of a common dolphin. A modern human being uses 31,000 calories a day, most of it in the form of fossil fuel. That is the intake of a pilot whale. And the average American uses six times that-as much as a sperm whale. We have become, in other words, different from the people we used to be.... We've ... gotten bigger. We appear to be the same species, with stomachs of the same size, but we aren't.1o ~ Daniel Bodansky

When I came it was in the face of everything decent, white sperm dripping down over the heads and souls of my dead parents. If I had been born a woman I would certainly have been a prostitute. Since I had been born a man, I craved women constantly, the lower the better. And yet women - good women - frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep. Basically I craved prostitutes, base women, because they were deadly and hard and made no personal demands. Nothing was lost when they left. Yet at the same time I yearned for a gentle, good woman, despite the overwhelming price. Either way I was lost. A strong man would give up both. I wasn't strong. So I continued to struggle with women, with the idea of women. ~ Charles Bukowski

Let all your crew pull strong, come what will. (Spring, my men, spring!) There's hogsheads of sperm ahead, Mr. Stubb, and that's what ye came for. (Pull, my boys!) Sperm, sperm's the play! This at least is duty; duty and profit hand in hand. ~ Herman Melville

The life an infertile person seeks comes to her not by accident and not by fate but by hard-fought choices. How to put together the portfolio of photographs. How to answer at the home study. What clinic or doctor or procedure. Donor egg or donor sperm or donor embryo. Open or closed adoption. What country, what boxes to check or uncheck. What questions to ask, and ask again. When to start and when to stop. What to say when her child says, Tell me my story. ~ Belle Boggs

Superfecundation is the term used when twins are conceived from sperm from different men if a woman has had more than one partner during a menstrual cycle. It is not known how often this happens, but if suspected, then paternity can be checked by DNA testing (Terasaki et al 1978). ~ Diane M. Fraser

Physicians do not systematically prescribe placebos to their patients. Hence they have no way of comparing the effects of the drugs they prescribe to placebos. When they prescribe a treatment and it works, their natural tendency is to attribute the cure to the treatment. But there are thousands of treatments that have worked in clinical practice throughout history. Powdered stone worked. So did lizard's blood, and crocodile dung, and pig's teeth and dolphin's genitalia and frog's sperm. Patients have been given just about every ingestible - though often indigestible - substance imaginable. They have been 'purged, puked, poisoned, sweated, and shocked', and if these treatments did not kill them, they may have made them better. ~ Irving Kirsch

And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg.
Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter ... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold ... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermo-dynamic miracle. ~ Alan Moore

Conner looking at the text he sent Jeff the night before:

8:42pm..Reed:Need you to go to Denver w me.
8:46pm..Jeff: in meeting. give me 1 hr.
8:53pm..Reed: no can do. want wife back. going now. think i cn talk her into it wth sperm.

Hell.Please don't let him have called her.

8:53pm..Jeff: R U drinking?
8:55pm..Reed: have wht she wants. solllid plan. better than hers.
8:56pm..Jeff: leaving now. wait 4 me.
9:02pm..Reed: don't worry botu it.
9:02pm..Jeff: WAIT 4 ME.
9:04pm..Jeff: PICKUP YOU PHONE
9:57pm..Jeff: you should stop for drink @ that bar in terminal with the big olives b4 flight.
10:22pm..Reed: hey, UR at the bar. you look pissed. ~ Mira Lyn Kelly

Looking up at her, Teensy said, "Any baggage you have, Bébé, ceased to be only yours the minute that sperm hit that egg. ~ Rebecca Wells

Public opinion is to an unconventional idea ... what abortion is to sperm. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Pott's, to whom I handed the work for translation, giving him a box of sperm candles ~ Herman Melville

Death Vision

I think it's a multiplication of sight,
Like after a low hovering autumn rain
When the invisible web of funnel weaves
And sheetweb weavers all at once are seen
Where they always were, spread and looping
The grasses, every strand, waft and leaf-
Crest elucidated with water-light and frost,
completing the fullest aspect of field.

Or maybe the grace of death is split-second
Transformation of knowledge, an intricate,
Turning realization, as when a single
Sperm-embracing deep ovum transforms,
In an instant, from stasis to replicating,
Star-shifting shimmer, rolls, reaches,
Alters its plane of intentions, becomes
A hoofing, thumping host of purpose.


I can imagine not merely
The falling away of blank walls
And blinds in that moment, not merely
A shutter flung open for the first time
Above a valley of interlocking forests
And constellations but a sweeping,
Penetrating circumference of vision
Encompassing both knotweed bud
And its seed simultaneously, seeing
Blood bone and its ash as one,
The repeated light and fall and flight
Of hawk-owl and tundra vole
As a union of origin and finality.

A mathematics of flesh and space might
Take hold if we ask for it in that last
Moment, might appear as if it had always
Existed within the eyes, translucent,
Jewel-like in stained gla ~ Pattiann Rogers

Zinc Zinc has significant effects on male sexuality, including sperm motility and production, erections, and even testosterone levels. Because the transformation of androstenedione to testosterone depends on a zinc-dependant enzyme, zinc intake significantly affects testosterone levels in the body. One study found that sixty milligrams of zinc daily for fifty days increased serum testosterone levels. Because DHT is metabolized from testosterone, a subsequent rise in DHT levels was also seen. Testosterone and DHT levels only increased in those men whose testosterone levels were low. Normal men experienced no increase. ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner

You seek to trap me into an inconsistency. If you were an amoeba who could consider individuality only in connection with single cells and if you were to ask a sperm whale, made up of thirty quadrillion cells, whether it was one or many, how could the sperm whale answer in a way that would be comprehensible to the amoeba? ~ Isaac Asimov

Metabolically active cells, such as those of the liver, kidneys, muscles, and brain, have hundreds or thousands of mitochondria, making up some 40 per cent of the cytoplasm. The egg cell, or oocyte, is exceptional: it passes on around 100000 mitochondria to the next generation. In contrast, blood cells and skin cells have very few, or none at all; sperm usually have fewer than 100. All in all, there are said to be 10 million billion mitochondria in an adult human, which together constitute about 10 per cent of our body weight. ~ Nick Lane

Chase your dreams just like the sperm chases a woman's egg! ~ Md. Ziaul Haque

In the seventeenth century, it was held by some that inside a human sperm there was a minute human being - a homunculus - that was planted inside the womb. Development consisted of the miniature homunculus enlarging and passing through birth and on to maturity-just like inflating a balloon. ~ John Tyler Bonner

And as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. ~ Herman Melville

The sperm whales' network of female-based family unit resembled, to a remarkable extent, the community the whalemen had left back home on Nantucket. In both societies the males were itinerants. In their dedication to killing sperm whales the Nantucketers had developed a system of social relationships that mimicked those of their prey. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

When the rebel in her touched the rebel in him, and the rebel in him touched the rebel in her, their fears incinerated. When his rebel sperm penetrated her rebel egg, that mysterious shimmer burst forth a blinding light, and a calcium wave signaled the information everywhere it could go. It has turned her into a visionary and turned him into a warrior - on a mission to save M. Earth, in the name of love. ~ Sharon Weil

I was still Quinn-kiss-tipsy enough to feel no mortification when I asked, "If you could have magic sperm, what kind of creatures would you want to create?"

His smile widened; he shook his head looking around at the people packing up, "I don't know how much good magic sperm would do me without a snake haired girl to put it in."

Quinn reached for his own water and took a gulp but he choked when I said, "You could use me!"

He abruptly set his drink down, sat back on his heels, and picked up a napkin; his eyes were wide as he coughed. ~ Penny Reid

I don't need to learn about computers and the internet. My sperm does it for me ~ Matthew Bracey

Every batch of sperm represents an opportunity for genetic typos - called de novo mutations - to be passed on. A 20-year-old man and woman will each pass on about 20 de novo mutations to a baby they conceive. By the time the couple is 40, a woman's total has remained at 20, while a man's has jumped to 65 - and it keeps climbing from there. ~ Jeffrey Kluger

Did you just seriously ask me if the Northern Lights mutated my sperm? ~ Eve Langlais

It also showed that the only real block to bi-maternal reproduction is the DNA methylation pattern at key genes. It disproved a previous hypothesis that sperm were required because the sperm themselves carried certain necessary accessory factors such as particular proteins or RNA molecules required to kick-start development properly.16 ~ Nessa Carey

I made plans for 8:00. When my girlfriend told me she was late, I told her, "That's funny, because my sperm was absent. ~ Jarod Kintz

Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me, and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-labourers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally, as much as to say, - Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill humour or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness. ~ Herman Melville

In the early 1980s, Graham worked hard to turn the Repository into a respectable business, rather than a ludicrous one: Graham's wife didn't like keeping the sperm at the Escondido estate. Not only had the house been picketed, but a Japanese trespasser had once made a run at the sperm, only to be nipped by a family dog. ~ David Plotz

What temperature is your ball sack running at now?" he asks, turning around and narrowing his eyes at me.

"What? I don't know. Why are you asking me this?"

"Dude, to effectively produce sperm, your testicles need to be at least two degrees cooler than your core temperature. You should ice those little nuggets. ~ Tara Sivec

To have my life accepted as just another ordinary life, to have it viewed as common and regular, was a singular moment. ~ Katherine A. Briccetti

People forget we come from an embryo and we're part sperm and part ovary. We have both sides in us. ~ Michelle Rodriguez

You see..." Nash said, acting doctorly, "you've got to keep the testicles away from the body's heat for optimal sperm count." He snatched two chicken balls from the container in front of him and cupped them in his hand. He laid a spring roll between them. "That's the biggest source of the sperm count issue for many men: their choice of underwear keeps their testicles snug up against the body. The testes become overheated. ~ Jean Oram

*Some dudes like to say that men have the instinct to spread their seed, while women are supposed to protect their reproductive organs from everything but the best sperm for the strongest potential offspring. By that logic every woman in the world should be saving herself for Dwayne "The Rock' Johnson and never let any of you shitheads touch her. Seriously, you guys should stop using that argument. ~ Anna Kendrick

Stand up! Don't ever give up on this bitchy life.
Feel afraid is okay, but don't avoid competition.
You've done that thing even since you're a sperm.
You accept this and you are the surviving winner. ~ Toba Beta

But how, from the viewpoint of a Martian, did man differ from other animals? Would a race that could levitate and god knows what else be impressed by engineering? If so would the Aswan Dam or a thousand miles of coral reef win first prize? Man's self awareness, sheer conceit. There was no way to prove that sperm whales and sequoias were not philosophers and poets exceeding any human merit? ~ Robert A. Heinlein

I eat some crisps while I think about my question. "Would you rather have your knob chopped off or your tongue?"

"Bloody hell, Ariel," he says. "Can't you ask one normal question?"

I shrug. "Answer it."

"Tongue," he says.

I laugh. "Really? You'd rather never speak a single word ever again, never tell your wife you love her, never tell your children that you think they're beautiful, all so you could get your end away?"

He nods. "I wouldn't get a wife or a child if I didn't have a knob."

"You'd still have balls and sperm," I say. "You could still father a child."

He shakes his head. "I'd want my knob. ~ Beckie Stevenson

Holy shit ... but we were using condoms."
Pink tinged her cheeks. "Not the weekend at the lodge."
He leaned over and lowered his voice. "Yeah, but I pulled out."
Emma cocked her brows. "And you're Mr. Super Potent Sperm, remember? ~ Katie Ashley

An idea has just come to me from nowhere, to wit: Might not the ancient and nearly universal belief that sperm could be metabolized into noble actions have been the inspiration for Einsten's very similar formula: 'E equals MC squared'? ~ Kurt Vonnegut

With her fingers running back up my arms, and all this sperm talk, things are getting a little too intense down below. I lean slightly forward, conveniently placing my forearms across my lap. ~ Jay Asher

The technology exists for a male contraceptive pill. We have the drugs to switch off testosterone and prevent sperm production. These drugs have never gone to market because developers know that men would never take something like that. Men would never agree to switch off their hormones. They would never put up with the side effects such as depression and low libido. And, honestly, why should they put up with it? Why should women? ~ Lara Briden

I suddenly had a vision of my sperm swimming around and talking in Bruce Willis's voice like in Look Who's Talking. Come on! Swim faster! This little shit has no idea we escaped from the condom! Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker! ~ Tara Sivec

Researched Heinrich Fuchs. There were a lot of Fuchs in Splugen. Splugen was full of dumb Fuchs. The Swiss are famous for maintaining neutrality, except, apparently, when it comes to shooting at monstrous bugs with someone else's sperm. ~ Andrew Smith

I asked him. " 'I'm telling you that you aren't shooting blanks and haven't been for quite awhile now, ' he said. 'Millions of little wigglies in your sperm sample. Your days of going gaily in bareback with no questions asked have temporarily come to an ~ Stephen King

Nobody knows what the whales may have to click and clack about, but it could be a form of voting-time to stop here and synchronously dive down in search of deep water squid, now time to resurface, move on, dive again. Clans also seem to caucus on which males they like and will mate with more or less as a group and which ones to collectively spurn. By all appearances, female sperm whales are terrible size queens. Over the generations, they have consistently voted in favor of enhanced male mass. Their dream candidate nowadays is some fellow named Moby, and he's three times their size. ~ Natalie Angier

It is a communion at once mystic & real, in the guise of metal.
Money which is liberty, is also fecundation. It is the universal sperm without which human societies would remain but barren wombs. Paganism, which knew & understood everything, opens to a shower of gold from on high the conquered thighs of Danae. That is what we should see on our coins, instead of a meaningless head, if we were capable of contemplating without embarrassment that religious tableau. ~ Remy De Gourmont

There are thousands of talented writers at work in America, and only a few of them (I think the number might be as low as five per cent) can support their families and themselves with their work. There's always some grant money available, but it's never enough to go around. As for government subsidies for creative writers, perish the thought. Tobacco subsidies, sure. Research grants to study the motility of unpreserved bull sperm, of course. Creative-writing subsidies, never. …America has never much revered her creative people; as a whole, we're more interested in commemorative plates from the Franklin Mint and Internet greeting-cards. And if you don't like it, it's a case of tough titty, said the kitty, 'cause that's just the way things are. Americans are a lot more interested in TV quiz shows than in the short fiction of Raymond Carver. ~ Stephen King

Releasing sperm into the vagina of a twenty-four-year-old does not a father make, ~ Colleen Hoover

We used to be Kings now we are beggars. We used to be leaders, now we are dogs We used to be fathers now we are sperm donors. Now we have nothing. No dignity, no honor and no self respect.. ~ Jill Thrussell

Gabi to Marcus I can't believe out of one hundred thousand sperm, you were the fastest! ~ Cherise Sinclair

The Massalians are not dualists but monarchians, and they have dealings with the infernal powers, and in fact some texts call them Borborites, from borboros, filth, because of the unspeakable things they do."
"What do they do?"
"The usual unspeakable things. Men and women hold in the palm of their hand, and raise to heaven, their own ignominy, namely, sperm or menstruum, then eat it, calling it the Body of Christ. And if by chance a woman is made pregnant, at the opportune moment they stick a hand into her womb, pull out the embryo, throw it into a mortar, mix in some honey and pepper, and gobble it up."
"How revolting, honey and pepper!" Diotallevi said. ~ Umberto Eco

She knows what he means, that they don't have to touch. the same thing that's happening to him is happening to her. she doesn't need to crawl under the table ans suck his dick. too tire to interest either one of them. the flow is strong between them. the emotional tone. let it express itself. he sees her in her wallow and feel his pelvic muscles begin to quiver. he say, tell me to stop and i'll stop. but he doesn't wait for her to reply. there isn't time. the tails of his sperm cells are lashing already. she is his sweetheart and lover and slut undying. he doesn't have to do the unspeakable thing he wants to do. he only has to speak it. because they're beyond every model of established behavior. he only wants to say the words. _Eric Packer ~ Don DeLillo

Did you know that embryologists have recently captured the moment of conception via fluorescence microscopy? What they discovered is that at the exact moment a sperm penetrates an egg, the egg releases billions of zinc atoms that emit light. Sparks fly, literally! That miracle of conception is a microcosm that mirrors God's first four words. ~ Mark Batterson

And that is close to saying that a woman can have no needs, desires, purpose, or calling so compelling and so important that she should not set it aside in an instant, because of a stray sperm. ~ Katha Pollitt