Can one say that there is a way of crying out, of speaking, which is properly feminine? Personally, I don't think so. In the end, I find this is another way of putting women in a kind of singularity, a ghetto, which is not what I want. I want them to be singular and universal at the same time.

One can hardly tell women that washing up saucepans is their divine mission, [so] they are told that bringing up children is their divine mission. But the way things are in the world, bringing up children has a great deal in common with washing up saucepans.

Tonight, once more, life sinks its teeth into my heart.

A writer is hoisted up onto a pedestal only to scrutinize him more closely and conclude that it was a mistake to put him up there in the first place.

Feminism is one way of attacking society as it now exists.

I discovered feminism around 1970-72-precisely the time when feminism began to exist in France. Before that, there was no feminism.

I think that The Second Sex will seem an old, dated book, after a while. But nonetheless, a book which will have made its contribution. At least, I hope so.