Influence
Various influential cultural figures have expressed a great interest in Sade's work, including the French philosopher Michel Foucault,, the American film maker John Waters and the Spanish filmmaker Jesús Franco.
Ian Brady, who with Myra Hindley carried out torture and murder of children known as the Moors murders in England during the 1960s, was fascinated by Sade, and the suggestion was made at their trial and appeals that the tortures (some of which they tape-recorded) were influenced by Sade's ideas and fantasies. Brady and Hindley had, however, read very little of Sade's actual work; the only book of his they possessed was an anthology of excerpts that included none of his most extreme writings.
Read more about this topic: Marquis De Sade
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Women stand related to beautiful nature around us, and the enamoured youth mixes their form with moon and stars, with woods and waters, and the pomp of summer. They heal us of awkwardness by their words and looks. We observe their intellectual influence on the most serious student. They refine and clear his mind: teach him to put a pleasing method into what is dry and difficult.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The purifying, healing influence of literature, the dissipating of passions by knowledge and the written word, literature as the path to understanding, forgiveness and love, the redeeming might of the word, the literary spirit as the noblest manifestation of the spirit of man, the writer as perfected type, as saint.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)