It’s easy to take off your clothes and have sex. People do it all the time. But opening up your soul to someone, letting them into your spirit, thoughts, fears, future, hopes, dreams… that is being naked.

opening up your soul to someone, letting them into your spirit, thoughts, fears, future, hopes, dreams ... that is being naked.

In the West we know the military uniform, clerical collar, medical goatee, and judge's wig. But where people are naked, it is the body itself that must be changed.

However, we must put up without clothes as they are—they have their reason for existing. They are on us to expose us—to advertise what we wear them to conceal.

I feel the need to be naked with you. Take off my pants, my shirt, my socks and my shoes. I need to be naked with you.

What do these conventions mean? What does a nude signify? It is not sufficient to answer these questions merely in terms of the art-form, for it is quite clear that the nude also relates to lived sexuality.
To be naked is to be oneself.
To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude. (The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display.
To be naked is to be without disguise.
To be on display is to have the surface of one’s own skin, the hairs of one’s own body, turned into a disguise which, in that situation, can never be discarded. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.

Naked I came into this world, naked I shall go out of it. And a very good thing too, for it reminds me that I am naked under my shirt, whatever its colour.

You’re very vulnerable when you’re naked. The psychology is a bit weird. It’s all in the eyes between the two people so you’ve got to be confident. You’ve really got to pretend you are enjoying it. I tended to have lots of conversations with lonely old men and to meet lots of nutters as well. I have incredible tolerance for darkness. I can take on board quite a lot of damaged people, but it takes its toll psychologically.

Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.

How many of us human animals could endure the sight of our own selves, stripped of the garments of illusion with which we clothe them? In our infancy others begin to garb us in conventional illusions to spare their own sight, and later we ourselves continue the process - we carefully deck ourselves out in elaborate regalia of pretence to hide the raw nakedness of our souls, not only from others, but from ourselves as well. We hate most those who strip us bare - and their motive is generally one of self-protection, as a man points out the deformities in others to draw attention away from his own defects.

- A Thunder of Trumpets

Forget your past experiences and achievements and stand naked, exposed to the winds and rains of life, and you will have a chance.

We’re at an interesting time where women have been told to take the pill is cool, to sleep with whom­ever you want, or wear what you want. But if you’re naked, it can be offensive or sexist in some way. That’s the last step our culture needs to deal with. We have this culture of men, especially, watching pornography, but then offended by a classic nude portrait or photograph, and I’ve never felt that way.

To see you naked is to recall the Earth.

Veiling and nakedness, they are two faces of the same kind. To see a woman naked, that does not mean she is liberated. It means the woman is just a body, not a mind. Traditional education, even postmodern education, veils the mind; the media veils the mind.