Annie Sprinkle quotes:

I don't think being obsessed with sex is any stranger than being obsessed with stamp collecting.

I had this client I'll call Samuel. Not his real name. I saw him steadily for twenty years, usually twice a month. Over twenty years you really get to know someone.

Whores do sometimes break up with their johns.

The single most important key to sex that I've yet discovered is conscious rhythmic breathing; the more you breathe the more you feel and the more you come alive. Many of us breathe only enough to survive but not to live fully. Deep breathing is a door to waking up to healing and to more personal freedom.

Blow jobs are okay, but kissing clients is still a taboo.

A lot of women I worked with didn't respect their clients. I had some clients who didn't respect me, but still you somehow made it work.

My johns adored and worshipped me, therefore they empowered me. When I was 18, 19, and 20, I had a poor self-image and needed attention. It's hard for people who haven't been prostitutes to imagine, but I think it's often true. There can be a very symbiotic relationship happening.

I had many clients who didn't respect me, probably because of how they were raised. We're all the walking wounded.

I met him when I was 18. We split up when I was 38. He saw me grow up too. He was a client, and also a friend. Such things are more common than people might think. This arrangement was not so different than many American relationships. That's why the laws against prostitution have got to go. They are totally unfair and mean.

In my theater pieces, I would do "Tits on the Head" - Polaroid photos for $10 on the stage. There would be a line of folks paying me $10 for their turn. It was public prostitution. I turned my whole audience into johns. But because it was in a theater context, an art context, it was socially acceptable.

There's a lot of pain and suffering out there. I think there needs to be more joy, and love, and orgasms in the world. We are a pleasure-negati ve society. Suffering is much more acceptable. And I want to tell women that they are sexually powerful beings, but they often don't get in touch with it because they are socialized to please men.

I usually kissed my clients if they wanted to kiss. I thought it was just way too weird to say "no kissing allowed," That to me was uncomfortable.

It's a pity that there's such a negative connotation about paying for sex.

Feel free to cover your eyes at anything that might upset you

There have been times where I have definitely felt like I was a john. As a pin-up photographer for ten years, when I was photographing men and women, to be honest, sometimes I felt like I was a john, especially when I was shooting guys because they - you know - they had to have big erections in the photos.

I've been putting out sexually explicit images of myself for years. I know this sounds bizarre, but somehow it makes me feel safer.

Some men can be very rude. On the other hand, some clients are absolute angels. One john always brought me a gift every time he came to see me. He brought me a pearl necklace, a ring, a bra or something. But eventually, as much as I really loved all the gifts, he fell in love with me, and he tried to weasel his way into my life. It was too much and I sort of had to 'break up with him."

Whores have the ability to put up with behaviors other women would never manage to put up with. That's why we deserve to be generously compensated.

People who have been prostitutes are ten times more willing to be johns than the average person. So, if you've been paid for sex you understand the value of that experience on some level.

I had orgasms with clients, even though it was kind of a taboo at that time to admit it. Women weren't supposed to enjoy sex that much!