Serena Shahidi

“To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“I’ve never been very keen on women who hang their sex round their neck like baubles. I think it should be discovered. It’s more interesting to discover the sex in a woman than it is to have it thrown at you, like a Marilyn Monroe or those types. To me they are rather vulgar and obvious.”
― Alfred Hitchcock

“No matter how rich their fantasy life had been, it cannot begin to compensate for the bleak emptiness that the real world now presents to their eyes. When they lose the ability to interact in the interpersonal environment, they are profoundly and terribly lonely, for they are not only without others, they also have less of themselves. In this precarious and weakened state of inwardness, a single traumatic event or a stressful interpersonal situation can create a panic or confused state that catapults the person into an acute psychotic episode. In the regression to a previous level of ego development, the patient’s attempts to stabilize and integrate the personality at intermediate stages fail, until finally a very primitive level of equilibrium is reached.”
― Robert W. Firestone, The Fantasy Bond: Structure of Psychological Defenses

“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
― William Goldman, Four Screenplays with Essays: Marathon Man - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - The Princess Bride - Misery