Asexuality Quotes

“You know why people pair up into couples? Because being a human is fucking terrifying. But it's a hell of a lot easier if you're not doing it by yourself.”
― Alice Oseman, Loveless

“Why did she have to spend the rest of her life coming out over and over and over...? And once she did, would people always expect her to talk about it? It would always be a huge deal, she would always be subjected to questions, and she would always have to defend herself. Would it ever stop feeling like A Thing, a barrier, between her and everyone else?”
― Claire Kann, Let's Talk About Love

“I know what I want and what I don’t want. I’ve never wanted sex. Never. I’ve never understood why it has to be in every book and movie and television show ever made. I never figured out why porn is such a huge thing. I'll be fine if no guy ever takes his shirt off for me. I’m not scared, I just don’t want it.”
― Kathryn Ormsbee, Tash Hearts Tolstoy

“Some people misinterpret aesthetic appreciation, romantic attraction, or sexual arousal as being sexual attraction, only to realize later that they are asexual.”
― Julie Sondra Decker, The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality

“It wasn’t that she hated the idea of sex, just . . . she didn’t want it. Didn’t need it. But no one else ever seemed to feel that way”
― Elyse Springer

“Maybe we weren't broken after all.”
― Calista Lynne, We Awaken

“I was worried about sex," he went on. "But you know what, Sulie? It's like being told I can't have any caviar for the next couple years. I don't even like caviar. And when you come right down to it, I don't want sex right now. I supposed you punched that into the computer? 'Cut down sex drive, increase euphoria'? Anyway, it finally penetrated my little brain that I was just making trouble for myself, worrying about whether I could get along without something I really didn't want. It's a reflection of what I think other people think I should want.”
― Frederik Pohl, Man Plus

“I don't like kissing."

"I suppose it is a matter of taste."[...]"I wondered, did anyone ever," shrug, "you know, hurt you so you don't like kissing? love?"

"Nope."[...]

"I thought maybe someone had been bad to you in the past, and that was why you don't like people touching or holding you."

"Ah damn it to hell," she bangs the lamp down on the desk and the flame jumps wildly.
"I said no. I haven't been raped or jilted or abused in any fashion. There is nothing in my background to explain the way I am." She steadies her voice, taking the impatience out of it. "I'm the odd one out, the peculiarity in my family, because they are all normal and demonstrative physically. But ever since I can remember, I've disliked close contact...charge contact, emotional contact, as well as any overtly sexual contact. I veer away from it, because it always feels like the other person is draining something out of me. I know that's irrational, but that's the way I feel."

She touches the lamp and the flaring light stills.

"I spent a considerable amount of time when I was, o, adolescent, wondering why I was different, whether there were other people like me. Why, when everyone else was facinated by their developing sexual nature, I couldn't give a damn. I've never been attracted to men. Or women. Or anything else. It's difficult to explain, and nobody has ever believed it when I have tried to explain, but while I have an apparently normal female body, I don't have any sexual urge or appetite. I think I am a neuter.”
― Keri Hulme, The Bone People

“Maybe it's the gay friends I have but they're all like... Sex! Exclamation mark exclamation mark! Which is extremely wonderful for them - I'm not saying they should be any other way - but. They're good at casual sex. I can't even imagine having it. I don't think any of my friends could put up with dating a guy who doesn't want to have sex. It's hard enough feeling like you're an outsider with most people because you're gay! And so you have to work harder to find your people. But you do it, you meet other gay guys, you manage to become friends with some of them, and then it still turns out you don't fit in. You're still different. What do you do then?”
― Cynthia So, If You Still Recognise Me

“If a person who has trouble believing sex could be unenjoyable can imagine a person they are not attracted to at all, and then try to imagine whether they could enjoy sex with that person, they might have some understanding of how an asexual person might be feeling about sex. Many asexual people feel that way about all potential partners. Just like most straight guys can’t imagine liking sex with another man, many asexual people would not enjoy the act—not because they’re doing it wrong, but because people just aren’t sexually attractive to them.”
― Julie Sondra Decker, The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality

“Those who tied love to sex, or even love to romance, didn’t own the emotion itself.”
― A.M. Strickland, Beyond the Black Door

“People talk a lot about all the homosexuals there are to see in Greenwich Village, but it was all the neuters that caught my eye that day. These were my people -- as used as I was to wanting love from nowhere, as certain as I was that almost anything desirable was likely to be booby-trapped.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick

“This was always the difficult part, back when she'd been at her old school: explaining that "asexual" and "aromantic" were different things. She liked holding hands and trading kisses. She'd had several boyfriends in elementary school, just like most of the other girls, and she had always found those practice relationships completely satisfying. It wasn't until puberty had come along and changed the rules that she'd started pulling away in confusion and disinterest.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“In essence, schizoid personality disorder is overtly characterized by social withdrawal, interpersonal detachment, solitariness in vocational and recreational choices, asexuality, idiosyncratic morality, and absentmindedness. Covertly, however, the schizoid individual is exquisitely sensitive, emotionally needy, acutely observant, creative, often perverse, and vulnerable to corruption. The avoidance of and the need for others, the callous persona and the inner sensitivity, and the absent-mindedness and vigilance are various facets of the same condition. The tension between these extremes is the heart of the schizoid pathology.”
― Salman Akhtar, Quest for Answers: A Primer of Understanding and Treating Severe Personality Disorders

“Like that club from earlier. Some people appreciate that vibe and some don't. If they force people to join when they don't want to, that's harassment.

It's the same with romance.”
― Uta Isaki, Is Love the Answer?

“But she herself had never felt that way about anyone, not as a teenager, not in art school, not since. It occurred to her that except for her brother, when they were children, she’d never seen
a man naked. More than that: she’d never touched anyone and felt that warmth, that electric tension at the nearness of someone else. The only thing that had given her that feeling had
been art—and then, of course, Pearl.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“Why have I let the world convince me I’m not enough without romance?”
― Alison Cochrun, The Charm Offensive

“Was it true the lovely part of love only lasted a moment and the sorrow went on for a lifetime? [...] she always wished men and women would just be content talking about books and music and things.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Julius

“When I got back to my room, the people upstairs were having sex again.
Rhythmic thumping against the wall. I hated it, but then I felt bad, because
maybe it was two people in love.
In the end, that was the problem with romance. It was so easy to
romanticise romance because it was everywhere. It was in music and on TV
and in filtered Instagram photos. It was in the air, crisp and alive with fresh
possibility. It was in falling leaves, crumbling wooden doorways, scuffed
cobblestones and fields of dandelions. It was in the touch of hands,
scrawled letters, crumpled sheets and the golden hour. A soft yawn, early
morning laughter, shoes lined up together by the door. Eyes across a dance
floor.
I could see it all, all the time, all around, but when I got closer, I found
that nothing was there.
A mirage.”
― Alice Oseman, Loveless

“Assexual.
Arromântica.
Eu voltei para as palavras até elas parecerem reais na minha cabeça, no mínimo. Talvez elas não fossem reais na cabeça da maioria das pessoas, mas eu poderia fazer com que fossem reais para mim. Eu podia fazer a porra que eu bem entendesse.”
― Alice Oseman, Loveless

“Asexual. The prefix 'a-' means 'not.' Hasn't my life always been about what I'm not? Not pretty, not athletic, not interested, not ready--but now here's this word that tells me that what I am not is actually what I am. Something--I'm something.”
― Karen Wilfrid, Just Lizzie

“After that her lack of libido didn't bother Julia at all. As long as it didn't make her breasts sag, it didn't matter.”
― Rona Jaffe, Mazes and Monsters

“Whereas my sister had an active social life and many dates, I never
dated in high school. Not that this bothered me, as I found that I
had very little if any attraction to men (or to women). It was only
much later as an adult that I finally realized that I lack the ability to
experience sexual attraction (I also have severe face blindness and
wonder if the two difficulties are connected somehow).”
― Ben Barres, The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist

“I forgot what led to it, but here it is:

'Romance, love, and sex are actually all separate things, but our conflation of them leads to various troubles.'

It surprised me to hear that. I'd never thought about them separately before. Because it never occured me to do so.”
― Iori Miyazawa, Otherside Picnic 8: Accomplices No More

“I explained to her the way I felt I floated up out of myself and observed the whole thing loosely, from a distance. I explained the way i felt no better or worse after doing it, only an overwhelming sense of having missed the point.”
― Julia Armfield, Salt Slow

“I had never experienced "just attraction," a physical impulse - only emotional desire that manifested physically. I wanted sex with someone only when I was already prepared to change my life for them, so I did not believe Henry when he claimed that wanting sex with others did not have to threaten me. When he talked about how everyone was sexually attracted to everyone else all the time, I could not understand attraction as anything but how I experienced it: emotional yearning - love, really - overpowering and overwhelming, a disaster for our relationship if targeted toward anyone but me.”
― Angela Chen, Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex.

“Why do humans use words that don’t mean what they actually mean?”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Do Not Be Afraid: A Whimsical Urban Fantasy About a Stranded Angel, a Hellhound Puppy, and a Second Chance on Earth

“That just sounds like extra effort in terms of existence.”
― Angela Chen

“The things people do from choice are meaningful and the effort that they take is a sign of great love.”
― Angela Chen

“May we move toward an understanding of ace- and aro-spectrum queerness itself as an avowal of the right to exist as enigma, as refusal—to persist in illegibility, to be unknown and unknowable.”
― Sherronda J. Brown, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture