Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day. The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present … Eating, sleeping, cleaning – the years no longer rise up towards heaven, they lie spread out ahead, grey and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won.

Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.

It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.

Work would be terribly boring if one did not play the game all out, passionately.

Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless.