Woman is shut up in a kitchen or in a boudoir, and astonishment is expressed that her horizon is limited. Her wings are clipped, and it is found deplorable that she cannot fly.

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.

My life was hurrying, racing tragically toward its end. And yet at the same time it was dripping so slowly, so very slowly now, hour by hour, minute by minute. One always has to wait until the sugar melts, the memory dies, the wound scars over, the sun sets, the unhappiness lifts and fades away.

The knight departing for new adventures offends his lady, yet she has nothing but contempt for him if he remains at her feet.

The emancipation of women must be the work of women themselves, independent of the class struggle.

This is certainly a very tricky point: How to ally yourself to other leftist forces without losing your feminist specificity.

The past is not a peaceful landscape lying there behind me, a country in which I can stroll wherever I please, and will gradually show me all its secret hills and dales. As I was moving forward, so it was crumbling. Most of the wreckage that can be seen is colourless, distorted, frozen: its meaning escapes me... all that's left is a skeleton. I shall never find my plans again, my hopes and fears - I shall not find myself.