Authentic love must be founded on reciprocal recognition of two freedoms. For each of them, love would be the revelation of the self through the gift of the self and the enrichment of the universe.

Virginia Woolf thought a lot about her own sex when she wrote. In the best sense of the word, her writing is very feminine, and by that I mean that women are supposed to be very sensitive to all the sensations of nature, much more so than men, much more contemplative. It's this quality that marks her best works.

The time that one gains cannot be accumulated in a storehouse; it is contradictory to want to save up existence, which, the fact is, exists only by being spent and there is a good case for showing that airplanes, machines, the telephone, and the radio do not make men of today happier than those of former times.

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

When women act like women, they are accused of being inferior. When women act like human beings, they are accused of behaving like men.

I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.

Françoise could not help taking a surreptitious glance at Xavière: she gave a start of amazement. Xavière was no longer watching, her head was lowered. Françoise barely suppressed a scream. The girl was pressing the lighted end against her skin, a bitter smile curling her lips. It was an intimate, solitary smile, like that of a half-wit; the voluptuous, tortured smile of a woman possessed of some secret pleasure.