The Fan-Maker's Inquisition Quotes

“What are books but tangible dreams? What is reading if it is not dreaming? The best books cause us to dream; the rest are not worth reading.”
― Rikki Ducornet, The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade

“A book is a private thing, citizen; it belongs to the one who writes it and to the one who reads it. Like the mind itself, a book is a private space. Within that space, anything is possible. The greatest evil and the greatest good.”
― Rikki Ducornet, The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade

“My pen is the key to a fantastic bordello, and once the gate is opened, it ejaculates a bloody ink. The virgin paper set to shriek evokes worlds heretofore unknown: eruptive, incorruptible, suffocating.”
― Rikki Ducornet, The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade

“Truth is a leper banished from the hearts of men and rotting away in exile. All that is left is corruption, a bad smell, some unnameable pieces of what was once a thing lucent and good.”
― Rikki Ducornet, The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade

“Luckless is that country in which the symbols of procreation are held in horror!' he wrote, 'while the agents of destruction are revered!”
― Rikki Ducornet, The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade

“The world is brimming with plaster replicas, and the point is to smash them to bits, to create an upheaval so acute it cannot be anticipated or resisted.”
― Rikki Ducornet, The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade

“Nature knows no Moral Order. Nature doesn't give a fig for social conventions or ethical questions. And God cannot respond to or repair evil, because He is not there to witness it.”
― Rikki Ducornet, The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade

“A fan is like the thighs of a woman: It opens and closes. A good fan opens with a flick of the wrist. It produces its own weather---a breeze not so strong as to muss the hair.”
― Rikki Ducornet, The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade

“I've often wondered if Morality is an attribute of Reason. Of course, evil is always buttressed by 'reasonable' arguments. Yet, what if True Reason is an attribute of Morality, and True Morality an attribute of Reason?”
― Rikki Ducornet, The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade