quotations about sex
The original sexual revolution was a tour de force, a huge success that came from what at first glance looks like a bad idea. Why bad? Because it risked losing valuable information. A successful bacterium, reproducing asexually, passes on its exact genetic makeup (absent the occasional mutation) to its offspring. But if an organism reproduces sexually, its genes are scrambled with those of its mate in order to produce the offspring's genes, a process called recombination. Because each half of this offspring's genes came from a different parent, and because of the scrambling process, no matter how successful either parent's unique combination of genes, the offspring's genome will not be the same as that parent's. Sexual reproduction has never passed on a full winning combination intact. Sex messes with success.
SETH LLOYD
Programming the Universe
We have inherited the term "sexual revolution" from those who first coined it in the 1960s, and in adopting their phrase we have perpetuated some of the confusions of that era. We continue to hear echoes of danger in the word "revolution." We continue to conflate very different impulses and outcomes. This received language to revolution has made it much more difficult for us to understand and discuss the roles and meanings of sex in contemporary America.
BETH BAILEY
Sex in the Heartland
Good sex is impossible to write about. Lawrence and Updike have given it their all, and the result is still uneasy and unsure. It may be that good sex is something fiction just can't do -- like dreams. Most of the sex in my novels is absolutely disastrous. Sex can be funny, but not very sexy.
MARTIN AMIS
interview, Washington Post, November 7, 2003
The attempt to possess a woman through an act of sex is as frustrating as trying to possess the scent of a rose by cooking and eating it.
COLIN WILSON
The Corpse Garden
I like sex for breakfast, kid. I eat early and often.
KAREN MARIE MONING
Iced
The word love, when applied to the reproduction of the species, is the most hateful blasphemy which modern manners have taught us to utter. Nature, in raising us above the beasts by the divine gift of thought, had rendered us very sensitive to bodily sensations, emotional sentiment, cravings of appetite and passions. This double nature of ours makes of man both an animal and a lover.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
The thing is, most of the time when you're coming pretty close to doing it with a girl -- a girl that isn't a prostitute or anything, I mean -- she keeps telling you to stop. The trouble with me is, I stop. Most guys don't. I can't help it. You never know whether they really want you to stop, or whether they're just scared as hell, or whether they're just telling you to stop so that if you do go through with it, the blame'll be on you, not them. Anyway, I keep stopping.
J. D. SALINGER
The Catcher in the Rye
Having sex is like eating a Big Mac, but making love is like getting a whole Extra value Meal.
ANONYMOUS
It's such a massive double edged sword. It makes no sense to me, and that's why I'm so outspoken about my sexuality. I think that women are entitled to sexual pleasure. I don't understand what is wrong with it. It's something that's good, and it makes you feel positive and happy and relieved. It's so funny because I watch these entertainment shows and they're talking about how Lindsay Lohan dates another man and she's a whore or whatever ... and a million other women. They lay into these girls because they're actually having a good time and being open about it. Then they do a report on George Clooney, who's a 'playboy' and looked up to by everybody and how sexy he is, and how he can date all these women and he'll never get married. It makes me want to vomit.
JENNA JAMESON
interview, May 17, 2007
Last time I was inside a woman was when I visited the Statue of Liberty.
WOODY ALLEN
Crimes and Misdemeanors
For wisest ends this universal Power
Gave appetites, from whose quick impulse life
Subsists, by which we only live, all life
Insipid else, unactive, unenjoy'd.
Hence to this peopled earth, which, that extinct,
That flame for propagation, soon would roll
A lifeless mass, and vainly cumber heaven.
JOHN ARMSTRONG
"The Oeconomy Of Love"
As a person, therefore, would have no enjoyment of drinking, if he had not previously known thirst, so he who is unacquainted with the longings of love has no experience of the most ravishing pleasures.
XENOPHON
Hiero
You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals
So let's do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel
BLOODHOUND GANG
"The Bad Touch"
If two people loved, they slept together; it was a mathematical formula, tested and proved by human experience.
GRAHAM GREENE
The End of the Affair
Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope.
GEORGE BURNS
attributed, How Sex Works: Why We Look, Smell, Taste, Feel, and Act the Way We Do
Sex makes you get real.
PAMELA ANDERSON
Playboy, July 1992
Sexual union is a holy moment in which a part of Heaven flows into the Earth.
JAMES REDFIELD
The Celestine Prophecy
Sex pleasure in woman, as I have said, is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Second Sex
Why in the world shouldn't they have regarded with awe and reverence that act by which the human race is perpetuated. Not every religion has to have St. Augustine's attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn't prevent it being a religious ceremony.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
attributed, Leading a Human Life: Wittgenstein, Intentionality, and Romanticism
"Sex" is a great, rich, complicated word. Metaphorically, it is a descriptive adjective that defines who we are; a noun that describes an endless array of people, places, and things; and a verb that conjures up activities that people all over the world find pleasurable. More than a word, it is a topic sentence for dissent and political posturing. It is a plot for complicated stories of interaction and intrigue, sometimes in our own families. It is a hypothesis for experimentation and curiosity. It is the grist of advertising copywriters, poets, and novelists. We desire sex, we deplore it, we regret it, or we do it, but whatever our stance, it remains on our minds.
SUSAN LIEBERMAN
Venus in Blue Jeans