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.

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.

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.

As an actor, whether I'm playing Othello on stage or David Estes on 'Homeland, ' that ability to give into your imagination is something that I enjoy.

None of the threats to the global commons will be solved by building walls.

What's all this fuss about plutonium? How can something named after a Disney character be dangerous?

Ah love, let us be true to one another, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams; so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy nor love nor life.

Know what you want to do, because if you don't know what you want to do, you'll get stuck.

However stupid a fools words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man.

My life is about being a civil rights activist. That's my life. Whoever you are, everyone, we either have civil rights or we don't. It's for everyone.

I think, as a general matter, clearly, the United States globally supports the development of democracy and the democratic yearnings of all people.

I am rather what we usually call a Pop pianist with my own romantic style.

There are few people who will make mistakes with fire after having once been burned.