Sade Quotes

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.

And I liked this extreme character of de Sade.

Sade`s stuff is real deceptive. She`s got stuff about prostitutes, poverty and people on the streets.

I think he`s a great millennial figure because he represents one of the darkest extremes of Western culture, ... I think he wrote in uncharted waters. His writing is pitch black, and I don`t think any writer before or since had touched bottom in the human psyche. I think Sade goes there and goes there relentlessly.

There were times when I would finish writing a sequence and I would see the face of my very well-mannered, deeply Presbyterian mother staring back at me from my imagination, looking at me with her lips pursed like, `Douglas, what do you think you`re doing?` ... But if you`re tackling a figure like Sade, you have a moral obligation to be true to his spirit.