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Quote by Naomi Novik

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Naomi Novik
Naomi Novik

Naomi Novik is a British writer renowned for her historical fantasy novels. Her most famous work is the 'Temeraire' series, which tells the story of an officer and his dragon's adventures during the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century. more

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“Everyone in Paraguay has the same fingerprints. There are crimes but people chosen at random are punished for them. Everyone is liable for everything. An extension of the principle, there but for the grace of God go I. Sexual life is very free. There are rules but these are like the rules of chess, intended to complicate and enrich the game. I made love to Jean Mueller while her husband watched. There have been certain technical refinements. The procedures we use (called here “impalement”) are used in Paraguay but also new techniques I had never before encountered, “dimidiation” and “quartering.” These I found very refreshing.”

“The hippies saw themselves as enlightened. They were in fact about as endarkened as it was possible to get, the absolute enemies of Apollo. We need a new 1960s style revolution, but one which is much better thought out with regard to it consequences. Above all, it has to be explicitly allied to Apollonian forces, and explicitly resistant to anarchism, libertarianism and individualistic narcissism. Cataclysmically, 60s individualism mated with Ayn Rand’s anarcho-capitalist libertarianism, which detests government, authority and the State. We thus have the worst of Dionysian individualism and irrationalism, and no Apollonian collectivism and rationalism.”

“As I held her and caressed her and kissed her naked flesh, I felt a strange and powerful awareness of the imbalance and awkwardness of the human body. Holding Naoko in my arms, I wanted to explain to her, "I am having sex with you now. I am inside you. But really this is nothing. It doesn't matter. It is nothing but the joining of two bodies. All we are doing is telling each other things that can only be told by the rubbing together of two imperfect lumps of flesh. By doing this, we are sharing our imperfection." But of course I could never have said such a thing with any hope of being understood. I just went on holding her tightly.”

“Underneath your sexuality is the drive and desire to be known and loved. God created you as a sexual being so that you might understand what it means to long, to desire, and to crave intimate oneness. Your sexuality was never meant to be an isolated physiological urge that is expressed apart from the rest of who you are as a woman. You have longings to share your heart, soul, and body with another person because God made you a deeply relational and spiritual woman. Your greatest need for intimacy however is to know the god who created you.”