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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.

Anne Desclos

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Anne Desclos
Age: 90 †
Born: 1907
Born: September 23
Died: 1998
Died: April 26
Journalist
Literary Critic
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
Rochefort-sur-Mer
Anne Cécile Desclos
Dominique Aury
Pauline Réage
Anne Cecile Desclos
Pauline Reage
Woman
Images
Interplay
Women
Object
Violated
Always
Lies
Reborn
Whose
Sacrificed
Objects
Endlessly
Divine
Contemplation
Joy
Achieved
Lying
Subtle

More quotes by Anne Desclos

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Finally a woman confesses! Confess what? What women never allowed themselves to confess. What men always criticized on them: they only obey the blood and everything is sex on them, even the spirit.
Anne Desclos
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The voluntary captive The speechless the prisoner Which I hide in my very depths.
Anne Desclos
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Is O used by René and Sir Stephen, or does she in fact use them, and...all those irons and chains and obligatory debauchery, to fulfill her own dream-that is, her own destruction and death? And, in some surreptitious way, isn't she in charge of them? Doesn't she bend them to her will?
Anne Desclos
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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.
Anne Desclos
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Lovers and mystics are familiar with this sense of grandeur, this taste of joy - in abandoning oneself to the will of others.
Anne Desclos
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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.
Anne Desclos
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To love is to live on the precipice.
Anne Desclos
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I think I have a repressed bent for the military, I like discipline without question, specific schedules and duties.
Anne Desclos
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I found that stiffly saluting member, of which he was so proud, rather frightening, and to tell the truth I found his pride slightly comical. I thought that that must be embarrassing for him, and thought how much more pleasant it was to be a girl. That, by the way, is an opinion I still hold today.
Anne Desclos
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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.
Anne Desclos
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Men are foolish to expect us to revere them, when, in the end, they amount to almost nothing.
Anne Desclos
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As a matter of fact, the other voice went on, if you do tie her up from time to time, or whip her just a little, and she begins to like it, that's no good either. You have to get past the pleasure stage, until you reach the stage of tears.
Anne Desclos
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I wasn't young, I wasn't pretty, it was necessary to find other weapons.
Anne Desclos
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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.
Anne Desclos
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Who I am finally, if not the long silent part of someone, the secret and nocturnal part which has never betrayed itself in public by any thought, word, or deed, but communicates through subterranean depths of the imaginary with dreams as old as the world itself?
Anne Desclos
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You have to get past the pleasure stage, until you reach the stage of tears.
Anne Desclos
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O felt that her mouth was beautiful, since her lover condescended to thrust himself into it . . .
Anne Desclos
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By my makeup and temperament I wasn't really prey to physical desires. Everything happened in my head.
Anne Desclos
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I think that submissiveness can [be] and is a formidable weapon, which women will use as long as it isn't taken from them.
Anne Desclos
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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.
Anne Desclos