Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to.

I like everyone who tries to show that madness is, in large part, conditioned by society and particularly by the family, and therefore, strongly affects women.

Literature in France seems to be undergoing a crisis now, and nothing comes immediately to mind.

The day knowledge was preferred to wisdom and mere usefulness to beauty. . . . Only a moral revolution -- not a social or a political revolution -- only a moral revolution would lead man back to his lost truth.

That a whole part of the middle class detests me... is utterly normal. I would be troubled if the contrary were true.

Sign of old age: distress at all leave-takings, all separations. And the sadness of memories, because I'm aware they're condemned to death.

She would never change, but one day at the touch of a fingertip she would fall to dust.