Taboo Quotes

“I felt like an animal, and animals don’t know sin, do they?”
― Jess C. Scott, Wicked Lovely

“The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“Because that was the problem with society. It cared too much about who you fell in love with but never about why. The why matters.”
― L.J. Shen, Defy

“She started thinking about all the euphemisms for death, all the anxious taboos that had always fascinated her. It was too bad you could never have an intelligent discussion on the subject. People were either too young or too old, or else they didn't have time.”
― Tove Jansson, The Summer Book

“When people have tried everything and have discovered that nothing works, they will tend to revert to what they know best—which will often be the tribe, the totem, or the taboo.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“That's the funny thing about religion: it doesn't matter what you say, you're going to upset someone. ”
― Lewis Black, Me of Little Faith

“What a strange world it is where you can have as much sex as you like but love is taboo. I'm talking about the real thing, the grand passion, which may not allow affection or convenience or happiness. The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down. That's the size of it, the immensity of it. It's not proper, it's not clean, it's not containable.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The PowerBook

“If you think you can stand looking and not touching for eight months, you're welcome to try."
"Try' being the operative word," he said, sighing. "No, I can't. And I don't want to try.”
― Leah Raeder, Unteachable

“Accept no
LIMITATION
to your
IMAGINATION.”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“Accept no
LIMITATIONS
to your
IMAGINATION.”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“Actually, nothing hurts like hearing the word slut, unless it is hearing the word rape dropped about carelessly. Again, a word I wouldn't have thought much about, except that when I was in high school a girl gave her senior speech on her best friend's rape. She ended not with an appear for women's rights or self defense, but by begging us to consider our language. We use the word 'rape' so casually, for sports, for a failed test, to spice up jokes. 'The test raped me.' 'His smile went up to justifiable rape.' These references confer casualness upon the word, embedding it into our culture, stripping it of shock value, and ultimately numb us to the reality of rape.”
― Christine Stockton, Sluts

“Fight for change? Thirst for difference?
Start talking what men avoid talking about.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“I am not sure if we are numbed to the reality of rape, but here's the sad irony. While the word rape can add an edginess to your language, talking about actual rape is taboo. I didn't know this until one of my friends was raped. Then I knew this, because I didn't want to tell anyone. If she were mugged, I would have told everyone and raged.”
― Christine Stockton, Sluts

“He methodically basted the dark skin of the Alsatian, which he had stuffed with garlic and herbs.
"One rule in life", he murmured to himself. "If you can smell garlic, everything is all right".”
― J.G. Ballard, High-Rise

“In general we are reminded that the word heimlich is not unambiguous, but belongs to two sets of ideas, which, without being contradictory, are yet very different: on the one hand it means what is familiar and agreeable, and on the other, what is concealed and kept out of sight. Unheimlich is customarily used, we are told, as the contrary only of the first signification of heimlich, and not of the second. [...] On the other hand, we notice that Schelling says something which throws quite a new light on the concept of the Unheimlich, for which we were certainly not prepared. According to him, everything is unheimlich that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light.”
― Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny

“I touched his hand, carefully. Not too intimate, but not some half-assed there-there pat, either. Would he understand? Usually the thought process for a seventeen-year-old boy went girl touching me>omg>boner.”
― Leah Raeder, Unteachable

“I couldn't speak. It wasn't because I was frightened. I was entranced, frozen in place by a crisp, terrifyingly icy beauty. Her gorgeousness seemed like a taboo, something forbidden to approach or even speak of, never mind touch.”
― Wataru Watari, やはり俺の青春ラブコメはまちがっている。4

“But did he know that I'd already forgiven him for having rejected me?”
― Maryam Schonbeck, My Heresy: A romantic story that will get you thinking.

“I had thought that by giving myself so fully to a single fantasy, by indulging in it without restraint or hesitation, I would be cured of all fantasies, able to put them from my mind and go back to living a normal life, or to the image at least of how I imagined a normal life should be. The effect, however, was quite the opposite. Having freed myself from the fear of committing an act I had previously seen as taboo, I had not banished fantasy in general from my mind, but rather had fuelled it. Other, darker fantasies began to haunt me, more daring fantasies, more exciting and lascivious.”
― Yasmine Millett, The Erotic Notebooks

“We keep her. She will be our pet. And cum dump. Pregnant.”
“That’s right little rabbit, this is your life now. Our little whore.”
“Heirs. She will give us heirs,”
― S.J. Ransom, Psychos in Love

“I'm seeking an amicable daily routine with someone I get along well with, like brother and sister, without being a slave to sex”
― Sayaka Murata, Life Ceremony

“Sexual orientation is becoming much more diverse," she went on. "Is a man attracted to young girls going to get an erection with his thirty-five-year-old wife? Can a woman who only gets aroused by two-dimensional men have sex with a living three-dimensional man without pain?”
― Sayaka Murata, Life Ceremony

“That’s why I was willing to pay so much to watch you come.”
― Nenia Campbell, Sine Qua Non

“Be careful if you find yourself in a place where only acceptable truths are allowed. Taboos are a sign of insecurity. Only fragile castles need to be protected by the highest of walls. The best answers are discovered not by eliminating competing answers, but by engaging with them. And engagement happens in groups built, not on taboos and dogma, but on a foundation that celebrates diverse thinking.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Anthropodermic bibliopegy has been a specter on the shelves of libraries, museums, and private collections for over a century. Human skin books—mostly made by nineteenth-century doctor bibliophiles—are the only books that are controversial not for the ideas they contain but for the physical makeup of the object itself. They repel and fascinate, and their very ordinary appearances mask the horror inherent in their creation. Anthropodermic books tell a complicated and uncomfortable tale about the development of clinical medicine and the doctoring class, and the worst of what can come from the collision of acquisitiveness and a distanced clinical gaze. The weight of these objects’ fraught legacy transfers to the institutions where they are housed, and the library and museum professionals who are responsible for them. Each owner handles this responsibility differently.”
― Megan Rosenbloom, Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin

“Human skin books—mostly made by nineteenth-century doctor bibliophiles—are the only books that are controversial not for the ideas they contain but for the physical makeup of the object itself.”
― Megan Rosenbloom, Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin

“Many confirmed human skin books didn’t begin their print life in this controversial binding but were rebound by collectors, usually doctors who took the oldest or rarest texts in their private collections and rebound them in skin removed from a corpse during anatomical dissection.”
― Megan Rosenbloom, Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin

“Flush against the ground, in ropes that dig.
Binding your sins. Tied for my pleasure.
Mine alone.
My captive to command, to leave my mark.
Beg me for forgiveness. You'll find non here.
I'm famished from your neglect, my heart bled dry for you.
It's your blood I crave now. Your cunt I'll own.
Until I'm satisfied, you'll only know the depths of my pain.
It's yours now."

~Nate in the short story Lost in Eden from Sacrilege: A Forbidden Dark Romance Anthology”
― Hayden Locke, Sacrilege: A Forbidden Dark Romance Anthology

“Alors le mot est évité. À cause de tout ce qu'il recouvre. Dans le camp des agressées, comme chez les agresseurs, on tourne autour du terme. C'est un silence croisé.”
― Virginie Despentes, King Kong théorie

“They don’t talk about these things at school. They just assume you know.”
― Julia Firley, The Capital of the Superficial