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“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.
But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”
― Terry Pratchett, Mort

“Oh, I am fortune's fool!”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“Risk means 'shit happens' or 'good luck”
― Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza

“I guess you can call me "old fashioned". I prefer the book with the pages that you can actually turn. Sure, I may have to lick the tip of my fingers so that the pages don't stick together when I'm enraptured in a story that I can't wait to get to the next page. But nothing beats the sound that an actual, physical book makes when you first crack it open or the smell of new, fresh printed words on the creamy white paper of a page turner.”
― Felicia Johnson

“Elora: "If you bite me, I'll stake you."
Baka: "If I bite you, I'll stake myself.”
― Victoria Danann, My Familiar Stranger

“He was breathing heavy, but speaking assurances, words of encouragement delivered in short sentences. "Hang in there now. It'll be okay. We're almost there. Almost there.”
― Victoria Danann, My Familiar Stranger

“What is this?" she asked, running her hand over the jacket.
"Sheepskin."
She looked at him with genuine amusement.
"So when you wear this, you're literally a wolf in sheep's clothing?”
― Victoria Danann, Moonlight

“Love me or hate me, both are in my favor... If you love me, I'll always be in your heart. If you hate me, I'll always be in your mind.”
― Victoria Danann, Knights of Black Swan Books 1-3

“…The shocking thing about any stripper gathering, I discovered, was that you have never heard women talk so fast and so explicitly about money in all your life. They make the guys on the trading floor on Wall Street look like a bunch of pansies.”
― Susie Bright, Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir

“watch myself in the mirrors at work constantly. It makes it more interesting. I used to do this ages ago out of worry of my body not looking right. Now I’m curious about what my “work movesâ€� look like, my whiteness with a slash of dark lace underwear, my tattoos (my “permanent epauletsâ€�) in contrast, in profile, my back arching doing a downward dog over the guy’s back before I slide down it, serpentine chin first to rub my cheek against his neck. I think about sex all the time because it’s my job. I want to make room for other stuff. I want to think about other stuff. I think?

…it’s strange to watch because it’s really just a long-ago choreographed dance, every time with a different partner. There are slightly different turns and dips, but I can almost do the counts. I feel unfair for offering this processed sex. They don’t care. Maybe I am good enough of an actress, or good enough of an empathy to make it seem authentic. Sometimes it feels that way. Sometimes they catch me watching myself bend and writhe. They usually watch. I watch myself kissing them out of the corner of my eye, to see what it looks like.”
― Kelley Kenney, Prose and Lore: Memoir Stories About Sex Work

“I had always dreamed of being a professional escort but never thought that there was any real money in it.”
― Chelsea Handler, My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

“I was bleeding but hoped he wouldn’t notice. I do this sometimes; a game I personally call, I have my period, let’s see if I can hide it! A darkish room and quick condom removal (make it seem like you’re just really nice and thorough, and use baby wipes to take it off) and even quicker moving of towels to cover any spots on the bed take care of this-though more than once I then saw smears on the pillowcase. Dirty! I love it. I want to not, like, ruby-shower heavy bleed on someone, but reach inside myself with a couple fingers and write my name on a dude’s chest with it. C-h-l-o-e. Smiley face.”
― Kelley Kenney, Prose and Lore: Memoir Stories About Sex Work

“Is this cock big enough for ya?â€� I looked at it. It was certainly medium-sized, and not skinny. I wasn’t sure if it had been a rhetorical question, like when people say “hot enough for ya?â€� or if he expected a thought-out response. I was momentarily confused, looking at his wielded appendage. “Yes,â€� I replied, with certainty. It was big enough for me.”
― Kelley Kenney, Prose and Lore: Memoir Stories About Sex Work

“...The reason why we’re strippers, is invariably more boring, more grounded in nonexistential needs like money—and pragmatic concerns, like money.”
― Ruth Fowler, Girl, Undressed: On Stripping in New York City

“How is it that we can punish women who are paid by politicians yet allow freedom and forgiveness to the politicians who pay them? The irony of the situation is that if we allow Sptizer’s deep pockets to buy his way back into our homes and hearts, then it’s not young women he hired who are whores, it’s the people of New York.”
― Valerie Baber

“When I was thinking about How Poetry Saved My Life entering the “big literary worldâ€� I more so viewed it as sub genre or an underdog book because there are still comparatively so few books about sex work, especially from authors who once worked street, like I have. Disclosing to working street-level sex work still feels risky to me. Apart from Runaway by Evelyn Lau (published in 1989) I have yet to read a first person memoir about street work. More of these stories must be out there—perhaps I just haven’t found them yet.”
― Amber Dawn

“Be realistic, Aiden, I told myself. You know your value to the penny and it's measured in inches, time, age, stamina, looks, and being able to put up with gross and sometimes bizarre situations. Personality was far down on a much longer list, and even farther down came intelligence. You should have insisted on having sex.”
― Aiden Shaw, Sordid Truths: Selling My Innocence for a Taste of Stardom

“Maybe he'd never come across anybody as well versed at objectifying body parts as I was. In my defense, this was an occupational hazard; one of the tricks of my trade was the ability to work with whatever was at hand. Over the years I'd learned to pinpoint my focus to the width of a pubic hair if there was nothing else to work with. (...) Before my eyes -or, more precisely, in my mind- Rasher became Lovely Bum Man.”
― Aiden Shaw, Sordid Truths: Selling My Innocence for a Taste of Stardom

“Maybe he'd never come acrross anybody as well versed at objectifying body parts as I was. In my defense, this was an occupational hazard; one of the tricks of my trade was the ability to work with whatever was at hand. Over the years I'd learned to pinpoint my focus to the width of a pubic hair if there was nothing else to work with.”
― Aiden Shaw, Sordid Truths: Selling My Innocence for a Taste of Stardom

“Maybe he'd never come acrross anybody as well versed at objectifying body parts as I was. In my defense, this was an occupational hazard; one of the tricks of my trade was the ability to work with whatever was at hand. Over the years I'd learned to pinpoint my focus to the width of a pubic hair if there was nothing else to work with. (...) Before my eyes -or, more precisely, in my mind- Rasher became Lovely Bum Man.”
― Aiden Shaw, Sordid Truths: Selling My Innocence for a Taste of Stardom

“The Ritz Hotel was grand, sophisticated, and established, unlike me. The only thing we had in common was façade. Mine may not have been as ornate but it was equally phony. I was presenting myself as an escort; I advertised as one, negotiated like one on the phone, and I identified as one to whoever was interested. I even simulated sex for escort rates.”
― Aiden Shaw, Sordid Truths: Selling My Innocence for a Taste of Stardom

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Kiss me, and you will see how important I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath