The nearer I come to the end of my days, the more I am enabled to see that strange thing, a life, and to see it whole.

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[...].

Eating, sleeping, cleaning - the years no longer rise up toward heaven, they lie spread out ahead, gray and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won. Washing, ironing, sweeping, ferreting out rolls of lint from under wardrobes - all this halting of decay is also the denial of life; for time simultaneously creates and destroys, and only its negative aspect concerns the housekeeper.

The American woman's inequality with men is proved by her defiant attitude.

The most sympathetic of men never fully comprehend woman's concrete situation.

To be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future.

I take on a shape and an existence only if I first throw myself into the world by loving, by doing.