“It showed a kind of obscenity you see only in nature, an obscenity so extreme that it dissolves imperceptibly into beauty.”

“Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.”

“The utmost extremity of degradation is the obscene merriment to which it gives rise.”

“Nothing can describe the withering horror of this. You feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light. You see a kind of insanity, something so obscene the very obscenity of it (rather than its threat) terrifies you. It was so new I could not take my eyes from the man's face. I felt like saying: "What in God's name are you doing to yourself?”

“That is the nature of the obscene: a truth so honest it must be guarded, for it holds a revelation of purity that is deadly to mankind.”

“It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.”