In truth we need to change the society itself, men as well as women, to change everything.

Anger or revolt that does not get into the muscles remains a figment of the imagination.

There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future.

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

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.

There is no such thing as a natural death: nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation.

If her functioning as a female is not enough to define woman, if we decline also to explain her through "the eternal feminine," and if nevertheless we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then we must face the question: what is a woman?