Lucy: A Novel Lust Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #1

Someone should have told me that there were other things to seek out in a tongue than the flavor of it, for then I would not have been standing there sucking on poor Tanner's tongue as if it were an old Frozen Joy with all its flavor run out and nothing left but the ice. As I was sucking away, I was thinking, Taste is not the thing to seek out in a tongue; how it makes you feel—that is the thing (3.1).

Ha! As Lucy's introduction to French kissing suggests, physical intimacy doesn't always go as smoothly as the soap operas would have us believe and can instead require some awkward experimentation.

Quote #2

[. . .] I had to be careful when I thought of [Tanner's] lips on my breasts, for just that, a thought, would make me forget what I was doing. I would sit at my desk in school, I would lie in my bed at night, I would walk down the street, and all the time I would go over and over, very slowly the times Tanner's mouth would crawl back and forth across my chest (3.7).

And they say men are the ones with sex always on the brain. This is just one example among many in the novel of how Lucy totally defies conventional thinking about how women are less concerned than men with sexual pleasure.

Quote #3

I liked [Hugh's] mouth and imagined it kissing me everywhere; it was just an ordinary mouth. I liked his hands and imagined them caressing me everywhere; they were not unusual in any way (3.21).

Hugh's just a plain old dude. . .who happens to drive Lucy crazy with desire. What is the effect created by Lucy's pointing out that Hugh's features are "ordinary" and "not unusual"?