The Best Masters of Sex Quotes

Dr. William Masters: Because I also know that carrying around a hidden truth year after year, even for a lifetime, can become an intolerable burden. There's a certain kind of freedom in just giving up.

Margaret: May I say something to you?
Barton: Margaret, the boy wants to go.
Margaret: No, I want Dale to hear this. I'm very fond of Dale, despite our very brief friendship. Stay single. I only say this to you because when you're young and in love, everyone thinks they'll be the exception. Sure, maybe mom and dad slept in separate beds, and then separate rooms. Maybe the older couples you know bicker or fight Maybe don't talk at all, if they ever did. But at your age, you can't imagine it will ever be you. But it will be. Which is bad enough, but what's even worse Is how much you'll feel like a failure Because when the person who knows you best loses interest, that really takes something out of you. Like surgery almost. And you really start to wonder If you'll ever be whole again. Anyway I'm babbling. Excuse me, gentlemen.

Margaret: You never loved one of them?
Barton: ...James Davenport. He was the only one that... That was so very long ago. Summer before I went to college.
Margaret: You loved a boy when you were eighteen? You knew you felt this way when you were eighteen?
Barton: It wasn't so clear-cut then.
Margaret: But, you hadn't even met me yet and you already knew you could never want me.

Margaret: I picked a situation as far away as possible from what I had with you. A man who wanted me so much, he physically couldn't wait to have me. Who loved women so much, he had to have two of them. Who led a life without secrets, so there were no devastating truths to discover, because I already knew the worst. A man who was ready and able to fix what was broken between us. Only, what's really broken, Barton... is me. I left Graham tonight, I... just walked out with my coat and my car keys. You'd think that'd be the beginning of a fresh start, wouldn't you? No possessions, no personal attachments, not even a wallet. And yet... I'm gonna make the same mistakes all over again. How could I not? I'm the same person I've always been. I'm looking for the same thing. I have no idea how to find it.

Dr. Austin Langham: You know we're building artificial satellites?
Dr. Austin Langham: Shoot 'em into space, and they just... float around.
Dr. Austin Langham: No tether.
Dr. Austin Langham: No responsibilities.
Dr. Austin Langham: That's how I used to feel.
Margaret: They're not actually floating.
Dr. Austin Langham: Hmm?
Margaret: My daughter took a science class.
Margaret: I borrowed her book.
Margaret: There are thousands of objects in orbit.
Margaret: Gravity pulls them toward Earth, but the Earth keeps... curving away underneath them.
Margaret: They're not actually floating.
Margaret: What they're really doing... is falling.

Margaret: I was ten when you were eighteen. Everything was ahead. You cannot give me back the years I could've done something else. I could've been with someone else. Why wasn't that my choice?

Margaret: This marriage of ours is broken. And unless you want me to break along with it, you have to let me go.

Dr. William Masters: We believe our book, "Human Sexual Response," will reacquaint all of us with our natural selves, free of fear, but also full of understanding. So we thank you for, uh, coming here today and - and we appreciate your interest in our book.
David: If I may...
Dr. William Masters: Really, Mr. Buckland? Why ask for the floor now when you've hijacked it so unapologetically all afternoon?
David: And I may have abused more than my fair share of time today, Dr. Masters, because I believe your book deserves such scrutiny, deserves an honest evaluation as to the impact of such material societally, not just the immense scientific value it provides to the medical community, because the contribution is immense. I mean, this study sheds light on an area that has, up until now, been the dark side of the moon. And if we view the sexual union as so sacrosanct that it cannot be open to question, we should remember a similar view was taken regarding the stars in Galileo's day. And I think we can safely say Galileo had the last laugh on that one.

Margaret: Even if you never laid a hand on a hooker again, that wouldn't change what is so impossible to understand. This morning, when you came in my room, I was practically naked and you didn't look at my body once. Not once. And yet, your face was filled with such... love.
Barton: Because I love you. You know that.
Margaret: We didn't sleep together before we were married because you weren't interested in sleeping with me. And I excused it away by saying passion is for teenagers and nymphomaniacs. Passion is not what makes a good marriage. This is a perfect, beautiful man who loves me. Who doesn't care that I'm tall and athletic. Who doesn't... doesn't want me to act stupider than I am. This is a man who understands me.
Barton: And thirty years later, we're still the best of friends. How many people can say that?
Margaret: ...It's not enough.

Margaret: If you don't fix it... I don't know what kind of future we can possibly have. But, I mean, listening to that doctor, I thought... you know, for all of our problems, this is still thirty years of a life. Not the life I thought I had, but the life I got... with a man... that I do love.

Holly: The Marshfield Fair.
Virginia: [over intercom] I'm sorry?
Holly: Candy apples. It reminds me of when I was little and my dad would buy them for me at the fair. They had this rich, crackly, toffee coating... I'm practically drooling just thinking about them.
Virginia: [to Dan] Not exactly the lubrication we were hoping for.
[presses intercom button]
Virginia: Thank you, Holly. Feel free to get dressed now.

Margaret: Stay single. I only say this to you because when you're young and in love, everyone thinks they'll be the exception. Sure, maybe mom and dad slept in separate rooms. Maybe the older couples you know bicker or fight. Maybe they don't talk at all, if they ever did. But, at your age, you can't imagine it will ever be you. But, it will be... Which is bad enough, but what's even worse... is how much you'll feel like a failure... Because when the person who knows you best loses interest, that really takes something out of you. Like surgery, almost. And you really start to wonder... if you'll ever be whole again.

Margaret: Then, it's me. You don't want to fight for me because you don't want me anymore.
Barton: I can't imagine my life without you. Everything I have, everything that matters to me, I have because of you.
Margaret: But, you don't want me, do you, Barton? You don't want to... make love to me. Why? What is wrong with me?
Barton: Nothing. You are the most beautiful woman in the world to me.

Judge: You're a public figure, Dr. Masters, so I must point out that if you accept this plea, you will be required to go into that courtroom and stand in front of a jury and the press, and admit to being a sexual deviant.
Dr. William Masters: Sexual deviant. I'm a scientist who's spent decades of my life researching sex. Even I don't know what that means. How can something deviate when there is no norm? No two humans would paint the same painting or write the same poem or compose the same opera, so why would we expect two humans to express their sexuality in the same way? In fact, if there is one thing the years of research has taught us, it's that no being's sexual response is formed on an assembly line. There is no shape it must take. It's as particular and individualistic as a kiss. And where there is such infinite variety, there's no norm. There's only deviation. Your honor, I am willing to plead guilty to sexual deviance, because I am a sexual deviant, because we are all sexual deviants.

Margaret: I guess what I'm saying is there are these moments when everything changes. Like the moment a nurse hands you this little bundle and says, "Here is your daughter, Mrs. Scully." Or your dad clutches your hand as you walk down the aisle and you realize he's crying. Or the moment a very handsome young doctor turns to you outside a theater and asks, "Did you like the movie?" And suddenly, everything is different.

Barton: You don't think you've changed?
Margaret: No. No.
Barton: I do.
Margaret: Ahh, why?
Barton: Because you left him. You didn't wait for him to leave you, like you did with me. That's the difference. That's how you've changed. You know that there's something more, something better. And you know that you deserve it. Or you would've stayed.
Margaret: ...But, I'm alone... I am all alone. I don't know what to do now. I don't... Who do I have? Where is home?
Barton: I... I think maybe I can help. I think... I think maybe I can give that back to you.

Virginia: Do you know the only thing more boring than a one-night stand? A whole string of them. On the surface, they may all seem different, but underneath, they're all exactly the same.

Art: You tell me, Virginia, when is it ever absolutely equal between partners anyway? Huh? Where you both feel exactly the same thing for each other at the same time, in the same amount? If I want to, why can't I love her more than she loves me? No man's ever loved you more than you've loved him?... What?
Virginia: Only all of them. It sounds like I'm bragging. I'm not. I'm really not. It's sad, actually.

Leslie: My question, Dr. Masters, is: Where is the love?
Dr. William Masters: Uh... In 1687 Sir Isaac Newton discovered what was then known as the 'Law of Universal Gravitation'. Gravity. Take two objects, the larger object exerts an attractive force on the smaller object, pulling it towards itself, as it where. An apple falls from a tree. The earth, by far the more massive object, pulls the apple to the ground. Simple enough. Only Newton's theory left scientists a rather puzzling problem. To paraphrase you, Dr. Farber, where is the gravity? It's not something you can see or touch, it's not something you can put under microscopes or examine from a telescope. Well, 230 years after Newton, a German patent clerk in Switzerland finally realised that scientists had been asking the wrong question all along. They would never find an object in all the immensity of space called gravity because, in point of fact, gravity is nothing but the shape of space itself. That clerk, Einstein, posited that the apple does not fall to the ground because the earth exerts some mysterious kind of force upon it. The apple falls to the ground because it is following the lines and grooves that gravity has carved into space. And when we talk about sex we do not talk about love, Dr. Farber, because love cannot be rendered into columns and graphs as if it were the same as blood pressure or heart rate. Love is not a force exerted by one body onto another. It is the very fabric of those bodies. Love is that which carves the lines and grooves. The curvature of our desire.