There is not a single line in this diary that does not call for a correction or a denial...Yes: throughout these pages I meant what I was writing and I meant the opposite; reading them again I feel completely lost...I was lying to myself. How I lied to myself!

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.

Self-consciousness is not knowledge but a story one tells about oneself.

A couple who go on living together merely because that was how they began, without any other reason: was that what we were turning into?

When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...].

There are topics which are common to men and women. I think that if a woman speaks of oppression, of misery, she will speak of it in exactly the same way as a man. But if she speaks of her own personal problems as a woman, she will obviously speak in another way.

The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women.