“Not that sex should be regarded as therapeutic or to be taken for medicinal purposes-only a dullard would hang such a millstone around the nibbled neck of a lay — but to approach sex carelessly, shallowly, with detachment and without warmth is to dine night after night in erotic greasy spoons. In time, one’s palate will become insensitive, one will suffer (without knowing it) emotional malnutrition, the skin of the soul will fester with scurvy, the teeth of the heart will decay.

Neither duration nor proclamation of commitment is necessarily the measure — there are ephemeral explosions of passion between strangers that make more erotic sense than many lengthy marriages, there are one-night stands in Jersey City more glorious than six-month affairs in Paris — but finally there is a commitment, however brief; a purity, however threatened; a vulnerability, however concealed; a generosity of spirit, however marbled with need; an honest caring, however singed by lust, that must be present if couplings are to be salubrious and not slow poison.”

~from Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins~