In a way, literature is true than life,' he said to himself. 'On paper, you say exactly and completely what you feel. How easy it is to break things off on paper! You hate, you shout, you kill, you commit suicide; you carry things to the very end. And that's why it's false. But it's damned satisfying. In life, you're constantly denying yourself, and others are always contradicting you. On paper, I make time stand still and I impose my convictions on the whole world; they become the only reality.

Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.

Marriage is a career which brings about more benefits than many others.

There are cases where the slave does not know his servitude and where it is necessary to bring the seed of his liberation to him from the outside: his submission is not enough to justify the tyranny which is imposed upon him.

Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.

To be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future.

I have never read a really good novel written by a man where women are portrayed as they truly are. They can be portrayed externally very well - Stendhal's Madame de Renal, for example - but only as seen from the outside.