No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

At the moment of their emancipation, women have a need to write their own histories.

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

There are jobs that can be done equally well by men or by women and that finally you can't see a difference. But from the moment that you involve yourself fully in writing a novel, for example, or an essay, then you are involved as a woman, in the same way that you can't deny your nationality - you are French, you are a man, you are a woman... all this passes into the writing.

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.

Every war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who undertake it.

The individuals who seem to us most outstanding, who are honored with the name of genius, are those who have proposed to enact the fate of all humanity in their personal existences.