“The face that looked back at me was flushed and happy. And, beyond its happiness, there was something else too – a power, a new found air of confidence; a force of life. It was the face of someone who recognised their desires, I thought, and was not afraid to give in to them, and I was proud that that face was mine.â€
Yasmine Millett
I did not judge him any more than I did myself. He wanted pleasure, it seemed to me, as did everyone else, and if he went about finding pleasure in an unconventional way, what did that matter?
Yasmine Millett
The common thread of my life has been my mistaken perception of people and myself.
Yasmine Millett
“I realised that I did not want only to imagine, as a normal person might be satisfied with doing. They had roused within me a wild desire to be like them, to be them, to find the pleasure that they had found – a dark forbidden pleasure – and to act with the same beautiful voracity, the same unbounded passion as they had acted, showing neither shame nor fear nor uncertainty, only the most primal of desires.â€
Yasmine Millett
“I felt desire too; desire to be as they had been; wild and exotic and commanding and willing to worship and be worshipped.â€
Yasmine Millett
“Most people hide their sentiments, their desires, their thoughts, behind veiled phrases, behind indirectness. When someone feels no need to do so, there is always something refreshing about it and a little frightening.â€
Yasmine Millett
“Knowing oneself is the hardest thing of all – knowing, that is, and accepting.â€
Yasmine Millett
“I was thinking, as my mind began to work once more, what adventures still lay before me; what pleasures awaited all those who had the courage to open themselves up to them.â€
Yasmine Millett
“They are fantasies, nothing more. Everyone has fantasies, yet only the very few dare to live them out.â€
Yasmine Millett
“I had just come in from a chilly, overcast November day. Yet when I glanced at her, she appeared as if bathed in the warm amber light of a summer’s evening.â€
Yasmine Millett
“I always found myself beginning to yearn for those things I was not receiving; those other forms of happiness that loyalty to one person caused to become inaccessible – to be glimpsed from afar yet always untasted, untouched, unfelt.â€
Yasmine Millett
“This was what life was supposed to be, I thought, full of strange, previously unknown thrills, and unfamiliar pleasures. It was supposed to be always new; new and a little dangerous.â€
Yasmine Millett
“The spying of course, I told myself, was not malicious, nor something shameful, it was merely a manifestation of the curiosity that everyone felt.â€
Yasmine Millett
“I liked the feeling of spying into the lives of others while they remained ignorant of my presence. I liked to hear, muffled yet nonetheless partially distinct through the door, the things they said when they thought that no-one other than their companion could hear.â€
Yasmine Millett
“Know what the other person dreams of, and we can decide whether or not we want to fulfil those desires.â€
Yasmine Millett
“As much as I want to know, what images or fantasies run through your mind when we make love; about your experiences in the past – what gave you the most pleasure, what you would most wish to repeat, what your deepest desires might be, and how I might help you to fulfil them – I am too shy to ask.â€
Yasmine Millett
“Yet the thought of how it might be to be with a lover who knew me, who glimpsed all of the desires that lie within me, even the darkest ones, and accepted them and wanted to fulfil them, is something I have never allowed myself to imagine. And to know, truly know all that my lover wanted, and to feel that I gave it to them. There is something wonderful, and dangerous, and powerful, and exciting in that. Perhaps that is the way to make the excitement endure, not fade a little more with every sunrise.â€
Yasmine Millett
“I marvelled at the power and confidence each seemed to display; at the way they took from each other exactly what they desired, and gave with equal ardour. Their bodies seemed always to move in harmony, one with the other. There was never any awkwardness to their movements; never any uncertainty. They appeared to understand, without the need of speech, exactly what the other wanted and would do next, and so their movements flowed like a beautifully erotic piece of choreography.â€
Yasmine Millett
“They made love for the reason all people should make love; for pleasure, for joy, for ecstasy, for themselves, and one another.â€
Yasmine Millett
