Every time I start on a new book, I am a beginner again. I doubt myself, I grow discouraged, all the work accomplished in the past is as though it never was, my first drafts are so shapeless that it seems impossible to go on with the attempt at all, right up until the moment - always imperceptible, there, too, there is a break - when it is has become impossible not to finish it.
Simone de BeauvoirThe characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning.
Simone de BeauvoirI think that where you go wrong is that you imagine that your reasons for living ought to fall on you, ready-made from heaven, whereas we have to find them for ourselves.
Simone de BeauvoirThat a whole part of the middle class detests me... is utterly normal. I would be troubled if the contrary were true.
Simone de Beauvoir