The torment that so many young women know, bound hand and foot by love and motherhood, without having forgotten their former dreams.

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

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.

There are moments when you have to write certain things and you don't have to think of your sex. If you are writing about the population of the thirteenth district in Paris, even if you are writing on the women in the thirteenth district, there's no need to consider your sex.

There are topics which are common to men and women. I think that if a woman speaks of oppression, of misery, she will speak of it in exactly the same way as a man. But if she speaks of her own personal problems as a woman, she will obviously speak in another way.

Art is an attempt to integrate evil.

My worst mistake has been not grasping that time goes by. It was going by and there I was, set in the attitude of the ideal wife of an ideal husband. Instead of bringing our sexual relationship to life again I brooded happily over memories of our former nights together.