Quotessence
Home / Authors / Chris Kraus
Chris Kraus

Chris Kraus Quotes

American writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllSexInfatuationLoveThinkingArtWomenFeminismRelationshipsEmpathyFalling In LoveImaginationSelfSexualityWorldWritingArtistAttractionDegradationDesireEmotion

Famous Chris Kraus Quotes

“It’s funny, with the two Yvonnes, the sex-infatuation part came after already knowing them quite well, adoring them and wanting to be with them in other ways. Whereas the sex-infatuations that’re male (you, Shake, the priest) leap out of nowhere, based on not knowing them at all. As if sex could provide the missing clues. Can it? In the cases of the males it’s like I felt some kind of hint of who that person was floating underneath the surface. Wanting sex to realize things I knew.”

MenSexWomenKnowingInfatuation
Book:I Love Dick
Create image

“Dear Dick, I guess it's been a case of infatuation... Mostly this infatuation-energy is about wanting to know someone. ... Whereas the sex-infatuations that's male *you, Shake, the priest) leap out of nowhere, based on not knowing them at all. As if sex could provide the missing clues. Can it? In the cases of the males it's like I felt some kind of hint of who that person was floating under the surface. Wanting sex to realise things I knew.”

SexInfatuationSexual RelationshipsSexual Fantasies
Book:I Love Dick
Create image

“And then Chris went alone into her room and wrote a letter, thinking she would send it, about sex and love. She was all confused about wanting to have sex, sensing that at this point if she slept with Dick the whole thing would be over. THE—UNEXAMINED—LIFE—IS NOT—WORTH—LIVING flashed the titles of a Ken Kobland film against the backbeat of a carfuck 1950s song. “As soon as sex takes place, we fall,” she wrote, thinking, knowing from experience, that sex short circuits all imaginative exchange. The two together get too scary. So she wrote some more about Henry James. Although she really wanted both. “Is there a way,” she wrote in closing, “to dignify sex, make it a as complicated as we are, to make it not grotesque?”

LoveSexImaginative Exchange
Book:I Love Dick
Create image

“All acts of sex were forms of degradation. Some random recollections: East 11th Street, on the bed with Murray Groman: “Swallow this mother ’til you choke.” East 11th Street, in the bed with Gary Becker: “The trouble with you is, you’re such a shallow person.” East 11th Street, up against the wall with Peter Baumann: “The only thing that turns me on about you is pretending you’re a whore.” Second Avenue, the kitchen, Michael Wainwright: “Quite frankly, I deserve a better-looking, better-educated girlfriend.” What do you do with the Serious Young Woman (short hair, flat shoes, body slightly hunched, head drifting back and forth between the books she’s read)? You slap her, fuck her up the ass and treat her like a boy. The Serious Young Woman looked everywhere for sex but when she got it it became an exercise in disintegration. What was the motivation of these men? Was it hatred she evoked? Was it some kind of challenge, trying to make the Serious Young Woman femme?”

SexMisogynyDegradation
Book:I Love Dick
Create image