We carry with us the turmoil of our conception.
There is no image that shocks us that does not remind us of the acts that made us.
Humanity is endlessly the product of a scene that pits two-male and female-mammals against each other, whose urogenital organs, provided abnormality overtakes them and once they have become distinctly misshapen, fit one inside the other.

Pascal Quignard, Sex and Terror. trans. Chris Turner. Seagull Books, 2011 (1997)

I may never be able to write much about this book, not at least until I’ve read it again and even then it is the sort of book that takes weeks, month, a lifetime, to absorb. These are just the opening lines of the introduction and shorn of context but in three sentences suggest the acuity, subtle wit and boldness of Quignard’s work. I think I could spend next year just reading and thinking about this book. It would be a year well spent.