Henry Le Nav

“I believe real faith grows from the sanctification of the ordinary. When as a couple you commit on a regular basis to going to bed early to talk, and perhaps to making love afterward, that’s a sanctification of the ordinary.”
― Stephen Snyder, M.D., Love Worth Making: How to Have Ridiculously Great Sex in a Lasting Relationship

“Few, if any, of the world’s problems can be solved with a mere twenty minutes of attention, and yet here, in the complex sociopolitical landscape of the bedroom, we have an opportunity to create bilateral satisfaction. When put that way, in the context of sexual peace and equality, is twenty minutes of focused attention, applied appropriately, really too much to ask, especially if it can save your sex life?”
― Ian Kerner, She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman

“But I believe that the grand unifying theory that explains the paradox of tragedy is (like most such theories) deceptively simple: We don’t actually welcome tragedy per se. What we like are sad and beautiful things—the bitter together with the sweet. We don’t thrill to lists of sad words, for example, or slide shows of sad faces (researchers have actually tested this). What we love is elegiac poetry, seaside cities shrouded in fog, spires reaching through the clouds. In other words: We like art forms that express our longing for union, and for a more perfect and beautiful world. When we feel strangely thrilled by the sorrow of “Moonlight Sonata,” it’s the yearning for love that we’re experiencing—fragile, fleeting, evanescent, precious, transcendent love.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“Before going to bed, I sometimes wander out onto the terrace to view the night sky. Most of the time I can’t see it; the urban incandescence is so bright that no stars are visible. But the windows across the courtyard are glowing. Behind them, people are watering plants, baking bread, fixing radiators, flipping television channels. Other windows are curtained, and beyond them, people might even be making love. Good for them. I wish them well. It’s not easy to be successfully sexual these days, and perhaps it never was. I do what I can to help.”
― Avodah K. Offit, Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist