Colette

Colette [Léopold-Émile Reutlinger]

Colette from Robert Phelps's Earthly Paradise: Colette's Autobiography drawn from the writings of her lifetime:

I am hostile to those who let life burn them out. Voluntary consumption is, I always feel, a kind of alibi. I fear there is not much difference between the habit of obtaining sexual satisfaction and, for instance, the cigarette habit. Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.

The habit of obtaining sexual satisfaction is less tyrannical than the tobacco habit, but it gains on one. O voluptuous pleasure, O lascivious ram . . . Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop the routine of the abyss: “It’s four o’clock . . . At five I have my abyss . . .”