He reflected. 'I know a lot of different kids of people; what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!

The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project

I'm not against mothers. I am against the ideology which expects every woman to have children, and I'm against the circumstances under which mothers have to have their children.

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

I had never believed in the sacred nature of literature. God had died when I was fourteen.

On the evenings when my parents held parties, the drawing-room mirrors multiplied to infinity the scintillations of a crystal chandelier. Mama would take her seat at the grand piano to accompany a lady dressed in a cloud of tulle who played the violin and a cousin who performed on a cello. I would crack between my teeth the candied shell of an artificial fruit, and a burst of light would illuminate my palate with a taste of blackcurrant or pineapple: all the colours, all the lights were mine, the gauzy scarves, the diamonds, the laces; I held the whole party in my mouth.

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.