It's afterwards you realize that the feeling of happiness you had with a man didn't necessarily prove that you loved him.

People come to Paris, to the capital, to give their lives a sense of belonging, of an almost mythical participation in society.

Banality is sometimes striking.

I don't have general views about anything, except social injustice.

A woman's work, from the time she gets up to the time she goes to bed, is as hard as a day at war, worse than a man's working day. ... To men, women's work was like the rain-bringing clouds, or the rain itself. The task involved was carried out every day as regularly as sleep. So men were happy - men in the Middle Ages, men at the time of the Revolution, and men in 1986: everything in the garden was lovely.

I'm still there, watching those possessed children, as far away from the mystery now as I was then. I've never written, though I thought I wrote, never loved, though I thought I loved, never done anything but wait outside the closed door.

She had lived her early years as though she were waiting for something she might, but never did, become.