What the famous have said
about sex
 
 

 

 

I've been too fucking busy and vice versa.

Dorothy Parker (1706-1790)
Poet, short-story writer, theatre critic and screenwriter

Women need a reason to have sex - men just need a place.

Billy Crystal (1947-)
American stand-up comic, actor and producer

Men get laid, but women get screwed.

Quentin Crisp (Denis Pratt) (1908-1999)
English actor and writer

When she raises her eyelids it's as if she were taking off all her clothes.

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954)
French novelist

I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.

Gore Vidal (Eugene Luther Vidal) (1925-)
Prolific American novelist, playwright, and essayist

I always thought music was more important than sex - then I thought if I don't hear a concert for a year-and-a-half it doesn't bother me.

Jackie Mason (1931-)
New York Rabbi turned comedian

Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
in Henry IV, Part 2

All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day.

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
English author of satirical novels

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.

James Baldwin (1924-1987)
American writer

If God had meant us to have group sex, I guess he'd have given us all more organs.

Malcolm Bradbury (1932-)
British academic and novelist

A fast word about oral contraception. I asked a girl to go to bed with me and she said "no".

Woody Allen (1935-)
American comedian

The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)
Italian artist, sculptor, engineer, scientist and inventor

She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.

Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)
American novelist

Older women are best because they always think they may be doing it for the last time.

Ian Fleming (1908-1964)
British journalist and author

Personally I know nothing about sex because I've always been married.

Zsa Zsa Gabor (1919-)
Hungarian-born American film star

When Eve ate this particular apple, she became aware of her own womanhood, mentally. And mentally she began to experiment with it. She has been experimenting ever since. So has man. To the rage and horror of both of them.

D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
British novelist

Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation ... the other eight are unimportant.

Henry Miller (1891-1980)
American writer of erotic novels

It's all any reasonable child can expect if the dad is present at the conception.

Joe Orton (1933-1967)
British dramatist

I know it does make people happy but to me it's just like having a cup of tea.

Cynthia Payne (1934-)
London housewife after being acquited of a charge of controlling prostitutes

It's not the men in my life that counts - it's the life in my men.

Mae West (1892-1980)
New York born actress known for her portrayals of defiantly sexy women of lost virtue and irreverent wit

Surely the sex business isn't worth all this damned fuss? I've met only a handful of people who cared a biscuit for it.

T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935)
British adventurer, soldier and author

I've been around so long, I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.

Groucho Marx (1895-1977)
American comedian and member of the famous Marx brothers

Home is heaven and orgies are vile,
but you need an orgy once in a while.

Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
American humourist

It doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.

Mrs Patrick Campbell (Beatrice Stella Tanner) (1865-1940)
English actress

Prostitution gives her an opportunity to meet people. It provides fresh air and wholesome exercise, and it keeps her out of trouble.

Joseph Heller (1923-)
American novelist, author of the comic absurdist novel Catch-22

Chastity: the most unnatural of the sexual perversions.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
English novelist, essayist, critic and poet

Of the delights of this world man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven.

Mark Twain (1835-1910)
American humourist

Love is not the dying moan of a distant violin - it's the triumphant twang of a bedspring.

S. J. Perelman (1904-1979)
US humorous writer

Sex is the biggest nothing of all time.

Andy Warhol (1926-1987)
US pop artist

Women's virtue is man's greatest invention.

Cornelia Otis Skinner (1901-1979)
American stage actress

In America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact.

Marlene Dietrich (Marie Magdalene Von Losch) (1902-1992)
German-American actress

Yes, there will be sex after death; we just won't be able to feel it.

Lily Tomlin (1939-)
American actress and comedienne

We should teach general ethics to both men and women, but sexual relationships themselves must not be policed. Sex, like the city streets, would be risk-free only in totalitarian regimes.

Camille Paglia (1947-)
American feminist thinker, actress and writer. Professor of the Humanities at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia

Part of the public horror of sexual irregularity so-called is due to the fact that everyone knows himself essentially guilty.

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947)
Major figure of 20th century occultism

Man is the hunter; woman is his game: The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, we hunt them for the beauty of their skins.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
British poet

We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation.

Lily Tomlin (1939-)
American actress and comedienne

Your daughter is old enough to do what she pleases...she likes to fuck, loves to fuck...she was born to fuck, and...if you do not wish to be fucked yourself, the best thing for you to do is to let her do what she wants.

Marquis de Sade (Donatien-Alphonse-Francois, Comte de Sade) (1740-1814)
French writer of novels, plays, and philosophical treatises, best known for his long-suppressed erotic works which gave rise to the term sadism

Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right.

Woody Allen (1935-)
American comedian

My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intrusions of the state into the private realm - as in abortion, sodomy, prostitution, pornography, drug use, or suicide, all of which I would strongly defend as matters of free choice in a representative democracy.

Camille Paglia (1947-)
American feminist thinker, actress and writer. Professor of the Humanities at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia

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