I have always felt I lived on the high seas, threatened, at the heart of a royal happiness.

Indeed, men never know how to love. nothing satisfies them. All they know is to dream, to imagine new duties, to look for new countries and new homes. While we women, we know that we must hasten to love, to share the same bed, hold hands, and fear absence. When we women love, we dream of nothing.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself - limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.

This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.

True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself, hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person.

I would like to be able to breathe— to be able to love her by memory or fidelity. But my heart aches. I love you continuously, intensely.