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

I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.

It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.

Literature is born when something in life goes slightly adrift.

Dwelling-place and food are useful for life but give it no significance: the immediate goals of the housekeeper are only means, not true ends.

One can not start by saying that our earthly destiny has or has not importance, for it depends upon us to give it importance.

To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.