And without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one's liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.

However gifted an individual is at the outset, if his or her talents cannot be developed because of his or her social condition, because of the surrounding circumstances, these talents will be still-born.

All oppression creates a state of war.

I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.

If you haven't been happy very young, you can still be happy later on, but it's much harder. You need more luck.

Insects were scurrying about in the shade cast by the grass, and the lawn was a huge monotonous forest of thousands of little green blades, all equal, all alike, hiding the world from each other. Anguished, she thought, "I don't want to be just another blade of grass."

I have never read a really good novel written by a man where women are portrayed as they truly are. They can be portrayed externally very well - Stendhal's Madame de Renal, for example - but only as seen from the outside.