Marriage is traditionally the destiny offered to women by society. Most women are married or have been, or plan to be or suffer from not being.

Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise." (p. 248)

Hegel held that the two sexes were of necessity different, the one being active and the other passive, and of course the female would be the passive one.

Ah, if only there were two of me, she thought, one who spoke and the other who listened, one who lived and one who watched, how I would love myself! I would envy no one.

Can one say that there is a way of crying out, of speaking, which is properly feminine? Personally, I don't think so. In the end, I find this is another way of putting women in a kind of singularity, a ghetto, which is not what I want. I want them to be singular and universal at the same time.

Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.

I think there is a great tendency toward autobiography among women today. It is perhaps facile - and I say that even though I have written one myself.