The Wicked Little Book of Quotes edited by Helen Exley

The Wicked Little Book of Quotes is a purely good book, in my opinion. The quotes are mostly from women celebrities of yore making pithy, risqué declarations related to sex.

There are five paintings of female nudes in the book. There are fourteen bare breasts. Ten paintings of men and women interlocked in passionate embrace. Beyond the fourteen bare breasts (two of my favorite words in the English language: "bare breasts") there are another three of delectable décolletage. Full Disclosure: I was bottle fed as a baby.

But as good as the tasteful, yet arguably, tumescent-inducing paintings are, they are easily eclipsed in erotic grandeur by the lascivious quotes from the many illustrious and lustful-minded ladies (bless them!) of mostly the early twentieth century, like this tasty truism below:

"Men aren't attracted to me by my mind, they're attracted by what I don't mind. ~ Gypsy Rose Lee

My runner up favorite is world famous, from Ulysses:

He kissed the plump mellow yellor smellor melons of her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation."

The winning quote in the collection, for me, comes from Francois Rabelais and his masterpiece, about half-a-millennium old, Gargantua & Pantagruel. It's rather lengthy, the quote, as well as what the quote depicts, I presume, being rather lengthy (and do pardon my redundancy with the "lengthy,") I'm just trying to make a point:

One of them would call it her little dille, her staff of love, her quillety, her faucetin, her dandilollie: Another her peen, her jolly kyle, her bableret, her membretoon, her quickset imp: Another again, her branch of coral, her female adamant, her placket-racket, her Cyprian sceptre, her jewel for ladies: and some of the women would give it these names, my bunguetee, my stopple too, my busherusher, my gallant wimble, my pretty boarer, my coney-burrow ferret, my little piercer, my augretine, my dangling hangers, down right to it, stiff and stout, in and to, my pusher, dresser, pouting stick, my honey pipe, my pretty pillicock, linkie pinkie, futilletie, my lusty andouille and crimson chitterlin, my little couille bredouille, my pretty rogue.

My main complaint, if I really even have a "main complaint," with The Wicked Little Book of Quotes, is that Mae West is overly represented herein. Of the eighty-two quotes, nine are Mae West's. While only one (and it's a zippy zinger) is Dorothy Parker's: "One more drink and I'll be under the host." LOL! Parker could quip about sex (about everything) with the best of them, and yet she gets only one quote, while Mae gets nine? That's absurd, Helen Exley! Helen Exley is the editor of this Mae West-biased, though nonetheless, delicious (and decadent) collection.

Another minor complaint of mine: Who really cares what Woody Allen has to say about sex? I've heard it all before! He's quoted twice. Twice too many times, I'd say. I can watch his movies (A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, for instance) if I really need to hear (again) his repressed and neurotic one-liners on sex that, I must admit, in Allen's defense, hit a tad too close to home to this somewhat repressed (religious upbringing!) and neurotic "reviewer".

Let's now close and have a moment of silence for Rue McClanahan.

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Rue, of Golden Girls fame, passed away on June 3rd of this year, 2010. Golden Girls taught the viewing public a lot about sex from a decidedly, what we'd term today, "cougarish" perspective, yes? I'll leave you with her doozy of a quote, by way of fond remembrance and homage to a late and great actress:

"Isn't it interesting how the sounds are the same for an awful nightmare and great sex".