I 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.

For years I thought my work still lay ahead, and now I find it is behind me: there was no moment when it took place.

…but all day long I would be training myself to think, to understand, to criticize, to know myself; I was seeking for the absolute truth: this preoccupation did not exactly encourage polite conversation.

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.

There has to be a certain relationship between the life and the writing style, and that is really a problem.

Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.

Can one say that there is a way of crying out, of speaking, which is properly feminine? Personally, I don't think so. In the end, I find this is another way of putting women in a kind of singularity, a ghetto, which is not what I want. I want them to be singular and universal at the same time.