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

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.

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.

The pursuit of a greater self is a holy-being.

If you turn from evil ways, you will be well.

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

Re-colonizing it and sort of reverse-colonizing it to the point that today the national dish of Great Britain is Chicken Tikka Masala.

I feel with ELP that I wasn't making the most of my life and I wasn't making the most of my creativity. I was marking time. I don't want to do that. Life is to short.

We can't allow ourselves to become inured to terrorist attacks to see it as the new normal.

Undisguised clarity is easily mistaken for arrogance.

Don't become a philosopher before you become rich.

The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most.

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's-self is.