Existence must be asserted in the present if one does not want all life to be defined as an escape toward nothingness.

Society turns away from the aged worker as though he belonged to another species. That is why the whole question is buried in a conspiracy of silence. Old age exposes the failure of our entire civilization.

To give space when what one most yearns for is closeness, that is both the great test and great tragedy of love.

Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day. The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present … Eating, sleeping, cleaning – the years no longer rise up towards heaven, they lie spread out ahead, grey and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won.

We always come back to the same vicious circle - an extreme degree of material or intellectual poverty does away with the means of alleviating it.

A couple who go on living together merely because that was how they began, without any other reason: was that what we were turning into?

If you are truly on the left, if you reject ideas of power and hierarchy, what you want is equality. Otherwise, it won't work at all.