The source of life, of rhapsody and angst, sex has been poeticized, picked over, and pathologized throughout the ages. From the ancients to Portnoy, from clear-eyed psychologists to the blind-with-desire, here are our favorite quotes about sex.
If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ’em!
—John Waters
“The boudoir will soon come to be known as the study, and no mistake,” he thought.
—Colette, The Last of Chéri
Marianne grew desperate. She pushed his hand away, took his sex into her mouth again, and with her two hands she encircled his sexual parts, caressed him and absorbed him until he came.
He leaned over with gratitude, tenderness, and murmured, “You are the first woman, the first woman, the first woman . . .”
—Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus
As for sexual intercourse, it is the rubbing of a piece of intestine, then a convulsion, and the spurting of some mucus.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
’Tis better to have love and lust
Than to let our apparatus rust.
—Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
