43
" I loved the zebras, the cheetahs, the fruit flies, the octopi and the rest. But The Nature of Sex “climaxed” with a species I’d never heard of before, “bonobos,” which the narrator also called by their Latin/scientific name Pan paniscus. I knew “Pan” as classical Greek mythology’s horned and horny god of the wild, so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. But when the bonobos started swinging onto my screen, well… what can I say? Today, I’ve got a whole book’s worth of stuff to say, but back then, I couldn’t utter a word. Imagine looking into an evolutionary funhouse mirror and seeing a side of yourself you’ve never seen before, shocking yet deeply familiar.
“Who are these vibrant, joyful creatures that look so much like me, only hairier?” I wondered. “And what’s with all the sex?” They weren’t just going at it for procreation. They were engaging in sex for recreation and interpersonal communication, very much like humans, but without the pretense, hypocrisy and shame. I got very excited, but no, I still didn’t want to have sex with them. I wanted to have sex like them (at least occasionally), in that playful yet deeply meaningful way of theirs I started calling the Bonobo Way.
But would it keep our sex life out of the dreaded sinkhole? Only time would tell. "
― Susan Block , The Bonobo Way
48
" Was she acting entirely consciously? No: women are always sincere, even in the midst of their most shocking duplicities, because it is always some natural emotion which dominates them. Perhaps, having given this young man such a hold on her, by having openly demonstrated her affection for him, Delphine was merely responding to a sense of personal dignity, which led her either to revoke any concessions she might have made or, at least, to enjoy suspending them. Even at the very moment when passion seizes her, it is perfectly natural for a Parisian woman to delay her final fall, as a way of testing the heart of the man into whose hands she is about to deliver herself and her future! "
― Honoré de Balzac , Père Goriot
54
" Last night, Good Friday night, at the bottom of the escalator at King’s X tube, a weasel-faced man in uniform was sweeping up rubbish with a wide broom, drink cartons, cigarette packets with all the dust and filthy scraps of the day which he pushed towards an elegant long black glove that was lying there. I expected him to pick it up as I would have – I thought of picking it up, but was too late. He smothered it in a wide sweep. It seemed to me extraordinary and shocking that he had no feeling for it. Several images went through my mind, a symbolic hand, a dead blackbird, an ornamental bookmark fallen from a lectern Bible – any once-precious relic being tumbled in the dirt. As I went up the escalator I remembered the Tatterdemallion whom I haven’t seen for months and thought of his body, if he were to die in the tube, being tumbled about with the rest of the thrown-away rubbish.” David Thomson, In Camden Town "
― , In Camden Town
