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.

I was very fond of Lagneau’s phrase: “I have no comfort but in my absolute despair.

You can't address yourself to women by speaking a language which no average woman will understand. In my opinion, it's wrong.

Hegel held that the two sexes were of necessity different, the one being active and the other passive, and of course the female would be the passive one.

Whatever the country, capitalist or socialist, man was everywhere crushed by technology, made a stranger to his own work, imprisoned, forced into stupidity.

Retirement revives the sorrow of parting, the feeling of abandonment, solitude and uselessness that is caused by the loss of some beloved person.

I don't want to be just another blade of grass.