Lessons are not given, they are taken.

Childhood is not only the childhood we really had but also the impressions we formed of it in our adolescence and maturity. That is why childhood seems so long. Probably every period of life is multiplied by our reflections upon the next.

Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd.

Great lovers will always be unhappy, because, for them, love is of supreme importance. Consequently they demand of their beloved the same intensity of thought as they have for her, otherwise they feel betrayed.

To know the world, one must construct it

We do not remember days, we remember moments.

For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries.