Anne Desclos Quotes

A truly submissive woman is to be treasured, cherished and protected for it is only she who can give a man the gift of dominance.

O felt that her mouth was beautiful, since her lover condescended to thrust himself into it . . .

Lovers and mystics are familiar with this sense of grandeur, this taste of joy - in abandoning oneself to the will of others.

To love is to live on the precipice.

Woman ... is the divine object, violated, endlessly sacrificed yet always reborn, whose only joy, achieved through a subtle interplay of images, lies in contemplation of herself.

I think that submissiveness can [be] and is a formidable weapon, which women will use as long as it isn't taken from them.

Story of O is a fairy tale for another world, a world where some part of me lived for a long time, a world that no longer exists except between the covers of a book.

I wrote 'The story of O' alone, for Dominique Aury, to interest him, to please him, to occupy him. I wasn't young, nor particularly pretty. I needed something which might interest a man like him.

You have to get past the pleasure stage, until you reach the stage of tears.

By my makeup and temperament I wasn't really prey to physical desires. Everything happened in my head.

Debauchery conceived of as a kind of ascetic experience is not new, either for men or for women, but until Story of O no woman to my knowledge had said it.

I wasn't young, I wasn't pretty, it was necessary to find other weapons.

Men are foolish to expect us to revere them, when, in the end, they amount to almost nothing.

The voluntary captive The speechless the prisoner Which I hide in my very depths.

The fact that he gave her was to him a proof, and ought to be one for her as well that she belonged to him: one can only give what belongs to you.

I think I have a repressed bent for the military, I like discipline without question, specific schedules and duties.