Quotes from "Twilight | ContraPoints"
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Some quotes to inspire developing eroticism in fiction.
(24:35) "Absence is the essential nature of erotic love. Because Eros is desire. And desire is lack. You want what you don't have."
(25:30) "Yearning is always a desire for something we feel like we have lost. And it's that ache of loss, of separation, that makes Eros bitter. Anne Carson says, quote, "Pleasure and pain at once register upon the lover, inasmuch as the desirability of the love object derives, in part from its lack." Because desire is derived from lack, something has to separate the lover and the beloved for desire to sustain itself.
In romance fiction that something is the barrier. The ruse, Anne Carson calls it, the third thing that "triangulates" desire. The purpose of the barrier is quote, "to represent eros as deferred, defied, obstructed, hungry, organized around a radiant absence to represent eros as lack." When the barrier is overcome, when the two lovers unite, then that's the end of your romance novel. Because the narrative is sustained by desire, and desire is sustained by separation, so when the separation ends, the desire ends. And that's the end of your story. The lovers kiss."
(26:51) "many long-term relationships are not in fact happily ever after. It's not easy to sustain desire over years. You have to keep inventing new ruses, new barriers that create the space for desire to continually reignite. Successful couples either learn to be content with a more pragmatic, non-erotic, love, or they're somehow able to sustain Eros, falling in love with each other again and again.
But I fear that's the exception. The rule is "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." Another way to put this would be to say that desire prefers the hunt to the kill. And maybe that's one reason sexuality is often represented as predator and prey."
(30:06) "To paraphrase the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, desire thinks it wants to be satisfied, but really it wants to go on desiring. Desire is desire for desire."
(33:30) "Yearning I think is inherently erotic. It's not necessarily sexual, but it's erotic in the sense that unlike craving, which can be satisfied, though only for a moment, yearning is a desire that can't really be satisfied at all. Like you know how no matter what you accomplish in life you can never be satisfied because you still feel the same void inside eating away at you all the time? Well this is the reason for that. We all have a black hole deep inside of us, and nothing can ever really fill it...
The things we desire become symbols of the hole, and we come to believe that we're yearning for the symbol. Anne Carson says, quote, "Who is the real subject of most love poems? Not the beloved. It is that hole.""
(37:50) "The sweetness of yearning comes from anticipation. It's the hope that just maybe, you might finally grasp the thing you're reaching for this time. There's a German word for this, because of course, vorfreude, which means pre-pleasure; the pleasure of anticipation...Anticipation is the basic pleasure of eroticism."
(1:50:59) "Augustine's claim is that our will can overcome temptation with God's grace. But Christians don't make the psychologically batshit claim that we can consciously direct our lust toward virtue. Sexuality can be repressed or resisted or it can be sublimated into creative or spiritual energy, but free will plays very little role in either love or lust."
(2:06:28) "Does Christianity have sadomasochistic subtext, or does BDSM have a Christian subtext?"
(2:17:13) "The "polluting" or "despoiling" of beauty is a major theme in male-oriented smut films. There's a lot of fluids being, you know, blasted everywhere. I think this a real point of conflict within heterosexuality. A lot of women want to be intensely desired by men, a lot of women fantasize about being virtuosically ravished by men, but far fewer women swoon at the prospect of being "befouled." ...But feminine submissive fantasies if anything tend to sanctify sexuality."
(2:18:08) "By submitting to a God-like man, the masochistic woman elevates herself. Whereas a sadistic man elevates himself by putting down a woman. Masculine sadistic fantasy usually involves degradation and despoiling of the woman."
(2:18:38) "sadism and masochism are in fact not complementary at all. The philosopher Deleuze recounts a joke that "tells of the meeting between a sadist and a masochist. The masochist says, 'Hurt me.' The sadist replies, 'No.'" ...
In reality a sadist and a masochist do not belong together. The ideal pairing is probably two masochists who alternate taking the active role in masochistic play acting."
(2:30:22) "Romance fantasy then is a psychodrama between different elements of the reader's own personality..."Romance reflects the exploration and reconciliation of male elements within the female reader." The romance hero represents the reader's animus, the man within; her aggressive, adventurous, masculine side."
(2:46:40) "Yin and yang mean dark-side and light-side. There are "two genders" in the sense that there are two sides of a mountain, the sunny side and the shady side. There's still shade on the sunny side, and light on the shady side. Depending where the mountain is, the shady side might become the sunny side. There is no shade without light. So, in a sense, the binary is non-binary...Because yin and yang are mutually dependent, they're both a duality and a unity, yin-yang."
(2:49:10)"The end of separation is the end of desire. It's life, it's death, it's unity, it is the absolute. It's perfect. Forever."
Some quotes to inspire developing eroticism in fiction.
(24:35) "Absence is the essential nature of erotic love. Because Eros is desire. And desire is lack. You want what you don't have."
(25:30) "Yearning is always a desire for something we feel like we have lost. And it's that ache of loss, of separation, that makes Eros bitter. Anne Carson says, quote, "Pleasure and pain at once register upon the lover, inasmuch as the desirability of the love object derives, in part from its lack." Because desire is derived from lack, something has to separate the lover and the beloved for desire to sustain itself.
In romance fiction that something is the barrier. The ruse, Anne Carson calls it, the third thing that "triangulates" desire. The purpose of the barrier is quote, "to represent eros as deferred, defied, obstructed, hungry, organized around a radiant absence to represent eros as lack." When the barrier is overcome, when the two lovers unite, then that's the end of your romance novel. Because the narrative is sustained by desire, and desire is sustained by separation, so when the separation ends, the desire ends. And that's the end of your story. The lovers kiss."
(26:51) "many long-term relationships are not in fact happily ever after. It's not easy to sustain desire over years. You have to keep inventing new ruses, new barriers that create the space for desire to continually reignite. Successful couples either learn to be content with a more pragmatic, non-erotic, love, or they're somehow able to sustain Eros, falling in love with each other again and again.
But I fear that's the exception. The rule is "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." Another way to put this would be to say that desire prefers the hunt to the kill. And maybe that's one reason sexuality is often represented as predator and prey."
(30:06) "To paraphrase the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, desire thinks it wants to be satisfied, but really it wants to go on desiring. Desire is desire for desire."
(33:30) "Yearning I think is inherently erotic. It's not necessarily sexual, but it's erotic in the sense that unlike craving, which can be satisfied, though only for a moment, yearning is a desire that can't really be satisfied at all. Like you know how no matter what you accomplish in life you can never be satisfied because you still feel the same void inside eating away at you all the time? Well this is the reason for that. We all have a black hole deep inside of us, and nothing can ever really fill it...
The things we desire become symbols of the hole, and we come to believe that we're yearning for the symbol. Anne Carson says, quote, "Who is the real subject of most love poems? Not the beloved. It is that hole.""
(37:50) "The sweetness of yearning comes from anticipation. It's the hope that just maybe, you might finally grasp the thing you're reaching for this time. There's a German word for this, because of course, vorfreude, which means pre-pleasure; the pleasure of anticipation...Anticipation is the basic pleasure of eroticism."
(1:50:59) "Augustine's claim is that our will can overcome temptation with God's grace. But Christians don't make the psychologically batshit claim that we can consciously direct our lust toward virtue. Sexuality can be repressed or resisted or it can be sublimated into creative or spiritual energy, but free will plays very little role in either love or lust."
(2:06:28) "Does Christianity have sadomasochistic subtext, or does BDSM have a Christian subtext?"
(2:17:13) "The "polluting" or "despoiling" of beauty is a major theme in male-oriented smut films. There's a lot of fluids being, you know, blasted everywhere. I think this a real point of conflict within heterosexuality. A lot of women want to be intensely desired by men, a lot of women fantasize about being virtuosically ravished by men, but far fewer women swoon at the prospect of being "befouled." ...But feminine submissive fantasies if anything tend to sanctify sexuality."
(2:18:08) "By submitting to a God-like man, the masochistic woman elevates herself. Whereas a sadistic man elevates himself by putting down a woman. Masculine sadistic fantasy usually involves degradation and despoiling of the woman."
(2:18:38) "sadism and masochism are in fact not complementary at all. The philosopher Deleuze recounts a joke that "tells of the meeting between a sadist and a masochist. The masochist says, 'Hurt me.' The sadist replies, 'No.'" ...
In reality a sadist and a masochist do not belong together. The ideal pairing is probably two masochists who alternate taking the active role in masochistic play acting."
(2:30:22) "Romance fantasy then is a psychodrama between different elements of the reader's own personality..."Romance reflects the exploration and reconciliation of male elements within the female reader." The romance hero represents the reader's animus, the man within; her aggressive, adventurous, masculine side."
(2:46:40) "Yin and yang mean dark-side and light-side. There are "two genders" in the sense that there are two sides of a mountain, the sunny side and the shady side. There's still shade on the sunny side, and light on the shady side. Depending where the mountain is, the shady side might become the sunny side. There is no shade without light. So, in a sense, the binary is non-binary...Because yin and yang are mutually dependent, they're both a duality and a unity, yin-yang."
(2:49:10)"The end of separation is the end of desire. It's life, it's death, it's unity, it is the absolute. It's perfect. Forever."
