Mating Quotes

“NO MATING.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“He held up his index finger. 'Rule one: in any dispute between mates, the male is always to blame, even when he is clearly blameless. Rule two'—his middle finger joined the first—'whenever in doubt, refer to rule one.”
― C.L. Wilson, Lord of the Fading Lands

“We could mate. In a year our nestlings would be large enough to mob anyone we like...Should I begin to court you? Do you like grubs or ants better?...I will be here. In case you change your mind about mating.”
― Tamora Pierce, Trickster's Choice

“I mean to say, I know perfectly well that I've got, roughly speaking, half the amount of brain a normal bloke ought to possess. And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the love light in her eyes. I don't know how to account for it, but it is so."

"It may be Nature's provision for maintaining the balance of the species, sir.”
― Wodehouse

“Jodie had taught her that the female firefly flickers the light under her tail to signal to the male that she's ready to mate. Each species of firefly has its own language of flashes. As Kya watched, some females signed dot, dot, dot, dash, flying a zigzag dance, while others flashed dash, dash, dot in a different dance pattern. The males, of course, knew the signals of their species and flew only to those females. Then, as Jodie had put it, they rubbed their bottoms together like most things did, so they could produce young.

Suddenly Kya sat up and paid attention: one of the females had changed her code. First she flashed the proper sequence of dashes and dots, attracting a male of her species, and they mated. Then she flickered a different signal, and a male of a different species flew to her. Reading her message, the second male was convinced he'd found a willing female of his own kind and hovered above her to mate. But suddenly the female firefly reached up, grabbed him with her mouth, and ate him, chewing all six legs and both wings.

Kya watched others. The females all got what they wanted – first a mate, then a meal – just by changing their signals.

Kya knew judgment had no place here. Evil was not in play, just life pulsing on, even at the expense of some of the players. Biology sees right and wrong as the same color in different light.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man's new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct, Several European countries and a number of states of the American Union sterilize the criminal and the insane. This is not sufficient. The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.”
― Nikola Tesla

“Only human males are able to find partners so easily. Well, most of them. In the animal kingdom, you have to be the best to get the girl. I once saw a peacock doing its mating dance. So beautiful and full of vitality he was. Yet it wasn’t enough for the peahen. There were better peacocks in the queue. The power of choice is always with the females.”
― Abhaidev, The World's Most Frustrated Man

“A male frigate bird blows up a wild red pouch on his neck. He can keep it puffed up for hours. It is his way of impressing the girls.”
― Julie Murphy, Sea Birds

“Have you met Mr. Tall, Dangerous, and Smoldering before?" Margo put a hand on Selenka's shoulder, the contact instinctive between packmates. "It's a serious breach of the girlfriend code to hide snacks like that.”
― Nalini Singh, Alpha Night

“It was like he was a caveman grunting, "You woman. Me man. Let’s make babies together.”
― Missy Lyons, Alien Promise

“Last night, dancing alone on the lagoon shore, swaying about with the moon and mayflies, she'd imagined she was ready. Thought she knew all about mating from watching doves. No one had ever told her about sex, and her only experience with foreplay had been with Tate. But she knew the details from her biology books and had seen more creatures copulating- and it wasn't merely "rubbing their bottoms together" like Jodie had said- than most people ever would.
But this was too abrupt- picnic, then mate the Marsh Girl. Even male birds woo the females for a while, flashing brilliant feathers, building bowers, staging magnificent dances and love songs. Yes, Chase had laid out a banquet, but she was worth more than fried chicken. And "Dixie" didn't count as a love song. She should've known it would be like this. Only time male mammals hover is when they're in the rut.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“For males, verbal self-advertisement appears to be a fairly constant function of speech, while for females, it may be an occasional function, more limited to one-to-one conversations with desired mates.”
― Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature

“Verbal courtship continues for months after people first meet, and it becomes the bedrock of human intimacy and love.”
― Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature

“She swat his hand away as he touched her breast again. "Stop that. I just want to-" Undeterred, he had gone for the button placket of her shirt. She scowled in exasperation. "All right, then," she snapped, "do as you please! Perhaps afterward we could manage a coherent discussion." Twisting beneath him, she flopped onto her stomach.
Christopher went still. After a long hesitation, she heard him ask in a far normal voice, "What are you doing?"
"I'm making it easier for you," came her defiant reply. "Go on, start ravishing."
Another silence. Then, "Why are you facing downward?"
"Because that's how it's done." Beatrix twisted to look at him over her shoulder. A twinge of uncertainty caused her to ask, "Isn't it?"
His face was blank. "Has no one ever told you?"
"No, but I've read about it."
Christopher rolled off her, relieving her of his weight. He wore an odd expression as he asked, "From what books?"
"Veterinary manuals. And of course, I've observed the squirrels in springtime, and farm animals and-"
She was interrupted as Christopher cleared his throat loudly, and again. Darting a confused glance at him, she realized that he was trying to choke back amusement.
Beatrix began to feel indignant. Her first time in a bed with a man, and he was laughing.
"Look here," she said in a businesslike manner, "I've read about the mating habits of over two dozen species, and with the exception of snails, whose genitalia is on their necks, they all-" She broke off and frowned. "Why are you laughing at me?"
Christopher had collapsed, overcome with hilarity. As he lifted his head and saw her affronted expression, he struggled manfully with another outburst. "Beatrix. I'm... I'm not laughing at you."
"You are!"
"No, I'm not. It's just..." He swiped a tear from the corner of his eye, and a few more chuckles escaped. "Squirrels..."
"Well, it may be humorous to you, but it's a very serious matter to the squirrels."
That set him off again. In a display of rank insensitivity to the reproductive rights of small mammals, Christopher had buried his face in a pillow, his shoulders shaking.
"What is so amusing about fornicating squirrels?" Beatrix asked irritably.
By this time he had gone into near apoplexy. "No more," he gasped. "Please."
"I gather it's not the same for people," Beatrix said with great dignity, inwardly mortified. "They don't go about it the same way that animals do?"
Fighting to control himself, Christopher rolled to face her. His eyes were brilliant with unspent laughter. "Yes. No. That is, they do, but..."
"But you don't prefer it that way?"
Considering how to answer her, Christopher reached out to smooth her disheveled hair, which was falling out of its pins. "I do. I'm quite enthusiastic about it, actually. But it's not right for your first time."
"Why not?"
Christopher looked at her, a slow smile curving his lips. His voice deepened as he asked, "Shall I show you?"
Beatrix was transfixed.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Love in the Afternoon

“For God's sake, if you mated bastards don't stop going apeshit like this, then I'm going to start shooting you."

"Remind me not to tell Jonas if I get infected," Lawe murmured to Rule.

"Better yet, don't get infected," Rule grunted. "I'd hate to have to shoot you myself when you start acting stupid.”
― Lora Leigh, Bengal's Heart

“My research is indicating that sleep deprivation and unnatural electromagnetic radiation exposures can trigger the human mating cycle.”
― Steven Magee

“It was only when I stopped working with electricity that I realized that electromagnetic exposures had been routinely triggering my mating cycle.”
― Steven Magee

“Listen, it is scientifically proven that pregnant women get super horny, because it helps them hold onto their mate who impregnated them. If they weren't horny, their mate would just be living with an overweight pickle-eater who stopped shaving her legs.
Yet every pregnant woman tells anyone who will listen (I'm looking at you, Jessica Simpson) that she's, "eight months pregnant, and has never felt sexier or hornier!"
Guess what? If you didn't feel sexy or horny during your eighth month of pregnancy, you'd be crying in a ball on the bedroom floor, clutching a snot-filled tissue, and wearing your food-stained fleece pajama bottoms as your cheating husband walked out the door with your non-pregnant pilates instructor. It is not interesting that you are horny when pregnant.”
― Jen Kirkman, I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids

“What would you do if I told you excessive masturbation can be a symptom of electromagnetic radiation exposure?”
― Steven Magee

“Humans no longer eat merely to satisfy energetic requirements, any more than we have sex just to make babies.”
― Heather E. Heying, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life

“When raping and pillaging is the preferred scheme for mating, speed is of the essence. So, the sturdy Neanderthals did not survive.”
― Debra Gavant

“Are you in control of your mating cycle or is your mating cycle in control of you?”
― Steven Magee

“Another socially important variable associated with mental ability is that of marriage, or more specifically that of who marries whom. A consistent finding in several studies of the characteristics of spouses is that there is a tendency for spouses to be similar in some—but not all—aspects of mental ability; in other words, some aspects of mental ability do show substantial “assortative mating.”

For example, in a study of married couples, Watson et al. (2004) examined spouses' scores on two mental ability tasks—a vocabulary test and a matrix reasoning test. Interestingly, even though vocabulary and matrix reasoning tend to be correlated with each other (both are strongly g-loaded tests), they revealed quite different results when correlations between spouses were considered. On the one hand, wives' and husbands' levels of vocabulary showed a fairly strong positive correlation, about .45.

But, on the other hand, wives' and husbands' levels of matrix reasoning were correlated only about .10. This result is consistent with previous findings, in which spouses have tended to show quite similar levels of verbal comprehension ability, but no particular similarity in mathematical reasoning ability (e.g., Botwin, Buss, & Shackelford, 1997).

Why should it be the case that spouses tend to be similar in verbal abilities, but not so similar in (equally g-loaded) nonverbal reasoning abilities? One likely explanation—as you might guess—is that two people will tend to have more rewarding conversations if they have similar levels of verbal ability, but that similar levels of nonverbal or mathematical reasoning ability are unlikely to contribute in an important way to any aspect of relationship quality.”
― Michael C. Ashton, Individual Differences and Personality

“Human vocabulary size may have evolved through the same sexual selection process that favored enormous song repertoires in some bird species. But whereas only male birds sing, both men and women use large vocabularies during courtship, because courtship and choice are mutual, and because unusual words work as reliable displays only if their meanings are understood.”
― Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature

“Setting boundaries on human behavior is the job of law, custom, and etiquette, not evolutionary psychology.”
― Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature

“Suddenly Kya sat up and paid attention: one of the females had changed her code. First she flashed the proper sequence of dashes and dots, attracting a male of her species, and they mated. Then she flickered a different signal, and a male of a different species flew to her. Reading her message, the second male was convinced he'd found a willing female of his own kind and hovered above her to mate. But suddenly the female firefly reached up, grabbed him with her mouth, and ate him, chewing all six legs and both wings.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“On average, men are more unrestricted and show higher-risk and sensation seeking; they are also lower in agreeableness, honesty-humility, and disgust sensitivity, particularly in the sexual domain (in constrast, there are only minor sex differences in impulsivity and conscientiousness). The reason is that these traits are crucially involved in the mating-parenting tradeoff, and males tend to invest in mating effort more than females even net of individual differences in life history strategies.”
― Marco del Giudice, Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach

“Parental investment theory predicts that, on average, the sex that invests more in its offspring, including the size of gametes, gestation, lactation and child rearing, will be more selective when choosing a mate, and the less-investing sex will engage in more intra-sexual competition for access to mates.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“An extraordinary proportion of life problems and resulting mental disorders arise from mating conflicts. Unrequited love, the pain of being rejected, the fear of being left, being stalked, being harassed, jealousy and being trapped in an abusive relationship are common precipitants of mental disorders.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“The fireflies, they are beautiful… But their beauty may not last long. The beetle flashes their light for only a few weeks each summer. After they mate and lay their eggs, they die,” said Phrin.
“If their sole purpose is to procreate, then the only worthy thing is their short-lived beautiful life.” She added. “But we are human, not fireflies. Aren’t we? We… have a long life and we live more than just that…”
― Asvoria K., Teleios: Flaw, is Perfect!