Quotes about sex
page 5

Dorothy Koomson photo
Nora Ephron photo
Bret Easton Ellis photo
Douglas Coupland photo
Nora Ephron photo

“As Harry puts it, men and women can never be friends because 'the sex part always gets in the way.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Source: When Harry Met Sally

Barbara Cartland photo
David Sedaris photo
Mark Tobey photo

“There has been 32 isms since the advent of Cubism, yet after all there are essentially the same two old strings, the Romantic and the Classical. We've just be confused by the storm. Science and psychology have played a great part to say nothing of sex.”

Mark Tobey (1890–1976) American abstract expressionist painter

The Tigers Eye 1, Mark Tobey, 1952; as quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 103
1950's

Abigail Adams photo

“This means you want to do sex in your house with your door open. And show to people the way you are doing sex.”

On kissing scenes in films, as quoted in " You want to do sex in your house with your door open http://www.punemirror.in/pune/cover-story/You-want-to-do-sex-in-your-house-with-your-door-open/articleshow/49875892.cms" Pune Mirror (22 November 2015)

Stuart Hall photo

“I can still enjoy sex at 74 - I live at 75, so it's no distance.”

Bob Monkhouse (1928–2003) English entertainer

Independent on Sunday obituary http://web.archive.org/web/20100522031727/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/bob-monkhouse-jokewriter-to-the-stars-and-the-longreigning-king-of-primetime-comedy-dies-at-75-578058.html

Sinclair Lewis photo
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs photo

“The prohibition of the expression of the sex drive, i. e., between consenting adults in private, lies outside the legal sphere.”

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–1895) German jurist, writer and pioneer of LGBT human rights

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. The riddle of "man-manly love": the pioneering work on male homosexuality, Volume 2, Prometheus Books, 1994. p. 604

Salma Hayek photo

“I'd hear, "Because they paid the man, there's no money for the woman." How many times do you think I heard this? Over and over. Then I became a sex symbol. Now, how the hell did that happen? I don't exactly know the moment when it happened, but all of a sudden I'm a bombshell. The way I discovered this was I did Desperado. I had a very hard time with the love scene. I cried throughout the love scene. That's why you never see long pieces of the love scene — it's little pieces cut together. I'm crying most of the time so they have to take little pieces. It took eight hours instead of an hour. I nearly got fired. … Because I didn't want to be naked in front of a camera. The whole time, I'm thinking of my father and my brother… And then when the movie comes out, I read the first review. What do they say about me. "Salma Hayek is a bombshell." I had heard that when a movie does badly here, they say it bombs. So I'm crying. Thinking they're saying, "That terrible actress! It's a bomb! Salma Hayek is the worst part of the movie!" I called my friend and said, "The critics are destroying me!" She says, "No, they're saying you're very sexy." And then I look at all the reviews, and everybody said I was very sexy. So I'm very confused. I said, "I wonder if that's good or bad." I hear, "Yes, that's good." Then I do Fools Rush In, and I'm a pregnant woman. And they say I'm sexy again! I go, "But I'm pregnant!"”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

I'm not even naked in this movie, and they still say I'm sexy. And then it became very depressing — I thought, I guess I'm reduced to that now. That's all I am in the perception of these people.
O interview (2003)

Jeet Thayil photo

“Women are more evolved biologically and emotionally, that’s well known and it’s obvious. But they confuse sex and the spirit; they don’t separate. Men, as you know, always separate: they separate their human and dog natures.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

Source: An extract from Jeet Thayil's Booker-shortlisted Narcopolis http://www.welovethisbook.com/features/extract-narcopolis, 10 September 2012 The Bookseller Media

Stephen Miller photo

“Shows like Queer As Folk, The "L" Word, Will & Grace and Sex and the City, all do their part to promote alternative lifestyles and erode traditional values.”

Stephen Miller (1985) political advisor for policy

Opinion column entitled Hollywood and the culture war http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2006/01/hollywood-and-culture-war (11 January 2006)
2000s

Milton Friedman photo
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo

“He [the King of Morocco] spends half his time asleep and the rest of it buried between the legs of the fairer sex.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 237
Attributed

John Kennedy Toole photo
Edmund White photo
Dannii Minogue photo

“The clitoris contains 8,000 nerve endings. It makes it easy to have sex. With yourself.”

Dannii Minogue (1971) Australian pop singer, songwriter, actress

Maxim Magazine (UK edition) (December 2001)

John Updike photo

“For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do — they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

“The Female Body,” Michigan Quarterly Review (1990)

Charles Baudelaire photo

“The observer is a prince who enjoys his incognito everywhere. The lover of life makes the world his family, just as the lover of the fair sex devises his family from all discovered, discoverable and undiscoverable beauties; as the lover of pictures lives in an enchanted society of painted dreams on canvas.”

L'observateur est un prince qui jouit partout de son incognito. L'amateur de la vie fait du monde sa famille, comme l'amateur du beau sexe compose sa famille de toutes les beautés trouvées, trouvables et introuvables; comme l'amateur de tableaux vit dans une société enchantée de rêves peints sur toile.
III: "L'artiste, homme du monde, homme des foules et enfant"
Le peintre de la vie moderne (1863)

Norman Mailer photo

“Booze, pot, too much sex, failure in one's private life, too much attrition, too much recognition, too little recognition. Nearly everything in the scheme of things works to dull a first-rate talent. But the worst probably is cowardice.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

As quoted in The Sunday Herald http://web.archive.org/web/20071112125539/http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.1824217.0.norman_mailer_1923_2007.php [Scotland] (11 November 2007)

David Berg photo
Warren Farrell photo
Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah photo
John Dryden photo

“She hugged the offender, and forgave the offense:
Sex to the last.”

Source: Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), Cymon and Iphigenia, Lines 367–368.

Tallulah Bankhead photo

“I've tried several varieties of sex, all of which I hate. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic; the others give me a stiff neck and/or lockjaw.”

Tallulah Bankhead (1902–1968) American actress

Tallulah, Darling: A Biography of Tallulah Bankhead (1980)

Warren Farrell photo
Derren Brown photo

“(DVD introduction) Well, welcome to your very own DVD of me, DVB, and ‘Mind Control’. If you weren’t expecting me and thought you were buying Reginald Perrin, then press eject now before you begin vomiting. Otherwise, please, please ensure that you are sitting in an extreme level of comfort, preferably in pre-worn slippers and, I trust, with your extended family around you. If you have seen the film ‘Signs’ and would like to wear the pointy tin foil hats now would be a good time to put them on you can’t be too careful. Well, pphhh, goodness me, er, it’s been a meteoric rise over these last years. The money and sex are exhausting and I have you the viewer to thank. Thanks. We’ve put together some of the pieces from the specials and series in glistening digital format, each pixel hand picked and gently polished and brought to you in wide-sound, surround-screen enjoyment. I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I’ll enjoy the royalties from this, which is enormously. If you don’t like it and HMV won’t take it back because you’ve got sticky all over it then the disc makes an excellent beer coaster or wheels for a space truck or can be immense fun just putting it on your finger and [waggling it], like that. But I hope you do like it. When I first started developing these techniques I had no idea that they were going to prove at all popular and for all my nancing about and staring I’m actually really excited to have a DVD out and can’t wait to go and find it in Discount Books & Puzzles next to the Dizzie Gillespie CD box sets and disappointing erotica. I hope you like it and if you do, please go and buy another one.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD

Colin Wilson photo
E.M. Forster photo
John Stuart Mill photo
David Foster Wallace photo
Fetty Wap photo

“And right after we sex, I don't leave I just hold her
I don't leave, I just hold her”

Fetty Wap (1991) American rapper and singer from New Jersey

"D.A.M. (Dats All Me)"

Jean Cocteau photo

“Allow the power of the soul to grow as flagrant as the power of sex.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Diary of an Unknown (1988)

“Good food, good sex, good digestion, good sleep: to these basic animal pleasures, man has added nothing but the good cigarette.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Charles Bukowski photo

“Sex was a trap, a snare. It was for animals.”

Pulp (1994)

Norman Mailer photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Douglass' chosen motto for his weekly publication The North Star. It appeared on the first issue. As quoted in Maurice S. Lee (2009), The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass. Cambridge University Press, p. 50; Thomson, Conyers & Dawson (2009). The Frederick Douglass Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 149; & Connie A. Miller. Frederick Douglass American Hero: And International Icon of the Nineteenth Century. Xlibris Corporation. p. 144

Marshall McLuhan photo
Derren Brown photo
Perry Anderson photo
Tim Berners-Lee photo

“Legend has it that every new technology is first used for something related to sex or pornography. That seems to be the way of humankind.”

Tim Berners-Lee (1955) British computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web

"The Guardian profile : Tim Berners-Lee"(12 August 2005) http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/aug/12/uknews.onlinesupplement

David Berg photo
Betty Friedan photo
GG Allin photo

“GG Allin: I might go and kick somebody in the head, I might grab a girl and force her to perform oral sex with me. I've had sex on stage with men, women and animals and everything in between.”

GG Allin (1956–1993) American singer-songwriter

GG Allin on The Jerry Springer Show, May 5. 1993.
On The Jerry Springer Show

Rahul Bose photo

“Fifty three per cent children in India face sexual abuse – both boys and girls – but we still feel uncomfortable talking about it. We are still hypocrites when it comes to issues like child abuse, sex or for that matter homosexuality. It is high time that we brought the issue from under the carpet.”

Rahul Bose (1967) Indian actor

Times of India, September 26, 2009, " Rahul Bose: We are all hypocrites http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/news-interviews/Rahul-Bose-We-are-all-hypocrites-/articleshow/5056023.cms"

Betty Friedan photo
Sophia Loren photo

“Sex appeal is fifty percent what you've got and fifty percent what people think you've got.”

Sophia Loren (1934) Italian actress

As quoted in Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s Companion (1984) Leslie Halliwell
Variant: Sex appeal is fifty percent what you've got and fifty percent what people think you've got.

Immanuel Kant photo

“Sex, without society as its landscape, has never been of much interest to fiction.”

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

Guilt, Character, Possibilities" (p. 235)
American Fictions (1999)

Madonna photo

“Madonna: "Listen, all you do is talk about my sex life on your show, so now you don't want to talk about my sex life when I'm on your show?!"”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

On The Late Show with David Letterman (1994)

“Living with someone always means a denial of self in SOME way and I suppose I have always known it was something I couldn't accomplish. So I've always stayed on the sidelines. Getting the pleasure vicariously. It's not wholly satisfactory, but then of course no lives are, and you know what I think about indiscriminate sex and promiscuous trade. I think it's the beginning of a long, long road to despair.”

Kenneth Williams (1926–1988) English actor and comedian

Letter, quoted in The Observer, Sunday 10 October 2010.
Source: Kenneth Williams: secret loves behind the life of a tormented man, The Observer, 10 October 2010 http://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/10/kenneth-williams-biography-christopher-stevens,

Piet Hein photo

“The human spirit sublimates
the impulses it thwarts;
a healthy sex life mitigates
the lust for other sports.”

Piet Hein (1905–1996) Danish puzzle designer, mathematician, author, poet

Hint And Suggestion : Admonitory grook addressed to youth
Grooks

Colin Wilson photo
Warren Farrell photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Robyn Ochs photo
Willy Russell photo
Edmund White photo
Christine O'Donnell photo

“The generation of young people that questioned the establishment in the '60s is now middle-aged, and has become the establishment itself. Moral absolutes have been eliminated, "feel-good" religions created, and free sex legitimized, paving the way for disposable marriages. The results of these tailor-made values are new strains of sexually transmitted diseases, more potent drugs, more broken families and out-of-wedlock pregnancy rates and worrisome suicide rates.”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

Christine
O'Donnell
Opposite Attraction; Pitching Abstinence to the Young and the Restless at the HFStival
1997-06-15
The Washington Post
C1
2010-09-15
Remembering Christine O'Donnell: Praising Helms, Missing Lenny and Squiggy, and Worries of Rampant Satanism
Kyle
Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/remembering-christine-odonnell-praising-helms-missing-lenny-and-squiggy-and-worries-rampant-
2010-10-20

Alan Rusbridger photo
Wilfred Thesiger photo
Mary McCarthy photo

“You mustn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.”

Dottie in Ch. 2
The Group (1963)

“The subject of men and women is absolutely fraught with sex, which is as it should be.”

Peg Bracken (1918–2007) American writer

I Try to Behave Myself: Peg Bracken's Etiquette Book (1966)

John Kenneth Galbraith photo
Sarah Silverman photo

“You know all the surveys say that evangelicals have the best sex life of any other group.”

Ted Haggard (1956) American minister

New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/movies/11pelo.html?ref=arts, retrieved January 12, 2007.

Steve Jobs photo

“The products suck! There's no sex in them anymore!”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

On products at Apple, just before his return to it BusinessWeek (July 1997)
1990s

Richard Feynman photo

“Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Does not appear to be from any of his books or cited in a biography. A Google Books search shows that the oldest book citing "physics is like sex" is Scary Monsters and Bright Ideas (2000) by science broadcaster Robyn Williams. On p. 44, this book claims: "Einstein said, 'You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother'. Richard Feynman added, 'Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it'." Given that Einstein didn't really say the former, it's likely that Feynman didn't really say the latter.
Disputed and/or attributed
Variant: Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.

Alfred Kinsey photo
Huston Smith photo

“Sex is the divine in its most available epiphany.”

The World's Religions.(1991)
The World's Religions (1991)

Lin Yutang photo
Vanna Bonta photo

“Sex is communication and creation. In my novel, "Flight", two lovers have sex by becoming a forest and rain.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks Sex in Space (Interview - Femail magazine)

Peter Sunde photo
Leonard Susskind photo

“(Jokingly) Sex in ten dimensions is impossible… topologically.”

Leonard Susskind (1940) American physicist

Lecture "Cosmic landscape and illusion of intelligent design", DESY Hamburg (28 September, 2006).

Phil Hartman photo
Martin Firrell photo
Jodie Marsh photo
Daniel Dennett photo

“Evolution embodies information in every part of every organism. … This information doesn't have to be copied into the brain at all. It doesn't have to be "represented" in "data structures" in the nervous system. It can be exploited by the nervous system, however, which is designed to rely on, or exploit, the information in the hormonal systems just as it is designed to rely on, or exploit, the information embodied in your limbs and eyes. So there is wisdom, particularly about preferences, embodied in the rest of the body. By using the old bodily systems as a sort of sounding board, or reactive audience, or critic, the central nervous system can be guided — sometimes nudged, sometimes slammed — into wise policies. Put it to the vote of the body, in effect….When all goes well, harmony reigns and the various sources of wisdom in the body cooperate for the benefit of the whole, but we are all too familiar with the conflicts that can provoke the curious outburst "My body has a mind of its own!" Sometimes, apparently, it is tempting to lump together some of the embodied information into a separate mind. Why? Because it is organized in such a way that it can sometimes make independent discriminations, consult preferences, make decisions, enact policies that are in competition with your mind. At such time, the Cartesian perspective of a puppeteer self trying desperately to control an unruly body-puppet is very powerful. Your body can vigorously betray the secrets you are desperately trying to keep — by blushing and trembling or sweating, to mention only the most obvious cases. It can "decide" that in spite of your well-laid plans, right now would be a good time for sex, not intellectual discussion, and then take embarrassing steps in preparation for a coup d'etat. On another occasion, to your even greater chagrin and frustration, it can turn a deaf ear on your own efforts to enlist it for a sexual campaign, forcing you to raise the volume, twirl the dials, try all manner of preposterous cajolings to persuade it.”

Daniel Dennett (1942) American philosopher

Kinds of Minds (1996)

Howard Stern photo
Daniel Johns photo

“Sex, drugs, and image is just enough to get you by in the real world”

Daniel Johns (1979) Australian musician

Dearest Helpless
Song lyrics, Neon Ballroom (1999)

Ted Nugent photo

“I got to tell you, guys that have sex with each other's anal cavities -- how can we offend guys that actually have anal sex? Don't you think that might offend some of us who think that's despicable?”

Ted Nugent (1948) American rock musician

Interviewed on Hannity and Colmes, June 29 2000
Source: Here Are 13 Other Repugnant Comments Ted Nugent Should Apologize For, February 21, 2014, Eric, Hananoki, Timothy, Johnson, Media Matters for America,

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2014/02/21/here-are-13-other-repugnant-comments-ted-nugent/198174

John Updike photo
Milo Yiannopoulos photo
Richard Summerbell photo

“All that is required of us, in our "new sexual ethic," is that we have sex in a way that favours us more than it favours our diseases.”

Richard Summerbell (1956) Canadian mycologist

Body Politic, June 1983, reported in Ann Silversides, AIDS activist: Michael Lynch and the Politics of Community (2003), p. 32.

Peter Greenaway photo

“There are only two subjects that matters, one is sex and the other is death, what else we could talk about it. And most the cinema talks all the time about sex and death. And my cinema deals with sex and death so… ¿what's the problem?”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Interview with El Tiempo in Bogotá, Colombia. October 2008 http://www.eltiempo.com/media/produccion/greenaway/#4
Interviews

Carroll Baker photo