David Levithan Quotes
I never understood why anyone would have sex on the floor. Until I was with you and I realized: you don't realize you're on the floor.
Levithan, David. The Lover's Dictionary. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
The Islamic Prophet had a surprisingly modern view of reasonable sexual activity—one which would not become generally accepted until the 20th century. This quotation is from the Hadith which is essentially a collection of quotations reported by contemporaries of the Prophet. Although valid for Muslims, the Hadith is less well known than the Koran which is recited by all good Muslims. For example, studies have shown that Muslim men do not follow this sexual prescription in most cases and few Muslim men or women even know that the Mohammed weighed in on this intimate a subject. See {586914} for another sexual prescription.
Usually, a prominent politician sending love notes to a mistress does not make for a notable quotation. However, in this bizarre instance, his passion was so great that he went to Argentina without telling his staff of the Lieutenant Governor where he was going. He disappeared for almost a week and the state was left without a chief executive. When he returned amidst the scandal, he refused to resign. That in itself was noteworthy when he had earlier called for the resignation of President William Clinton for sexual indiscretions which did not even affect the government as his indiscretions did. See {628239}.
Wilson was a very formal, seemingly distant, and unemotional leader. This quotation is fascinating in that it shows a side of Wilson’s personality that most people then and later never suspected. What makes it even more important, was that he wrote this letter just after the American ocean liner Lusitania had been torpedoed by the Germans and sunk with loss of American lives and the President was in the midst of a huge International Crisis that would culminate in America entering the First World War. Even that did not take Wilson’s mind off his sex life.
David Levithan is an American young adult fiction author and editor. His first book, Boy Meets Boy, was published by Knopf Books for Young Readers in 2003. He has written numerous works featuring strong male gay characters, most notably Boy Meets Boy and Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List.
