“Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.”

“Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence--religious meaning--apart from God as revealed through the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through the ecstasy of recreational sex, through the ecstasy of crowds. Church leaders frequently warn against the drugs and the sex, but at least, in America, almost never against the crowds.”

“Just because the sexes are equal doesn’t mean that sex is.”

“A man is never such an egotist as at moments of spiritual ecstasy. At such times it seems to him that there is nothing on earth more splendid and interesting than himself.”

“Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.”

“She understood nothing, she learned nothing, so she just stood there, lively sometimes, joyful even, a groundless joy that brought tears to their eyes, though they wished they could share these moments with her: her ecstasy over a leaf, which could last for whole minutes at a time, as though it were the most wonderful thing in the world, as though the precise bifurcations of its veins or the carefree elegance with which it swayed in the breeze was what made her clap her hands together in glee...”