As soon as a woman re- fuses to be perfectly happy doing housework eight hours a day, society has a tendency to want to do a lobotomy on her.

Those interested in perpetuating present conditions are always in tears about the marvelous past that is about to disappear, without having so much as a smile for the young future.

Live with no time-out.

The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength -each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence.

There's something tragic about you. Your feeling for the absolute. You were made to believe in God and spend your life in a convent.' There are too many with that vocation. God would have had to love only me.

I would stand transfixed before the windows of the confectioners' shops, fascinated by the luminous sparkle of candied fruits, the cloudy lustre of jellies, the kaleidoscope inflorescence of acidulated fruit drops - red, green, orange, violet: I coveted the colours themselves as much as the pleasure they promised me.

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.