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

To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.

In 1949, I believed that social progress, the triumph of the proletariat, socialism would lead to the emancipation of women. But I saw that nothing came of it: first of all, that socialism was not achieved anywhere, and that in certain countries which called themselves socialist, the situation of women was no better than it was in so-called capitalist countries.

Words have to murder reality before they can hold it captive.

Old age was growing inside me. It kept catching my eye from the depths of the mirror. I was paralyzed sometimes as I saw it making its way toward me so steadily when nothing inside me was ready for it.

Old age is life's parody.

It's not a very big step from contentment to complacency.