But I must admit I didn´t like that idea; do the same thing as everyone else. Eating to live, living to eat - that had been the nightmare of my adolescence. If it meant going back to that, if would be just as well to turn on the gas at once. But I suppose everyone thinks of things like that: let´s turn on the gas at once. And you don´t turn it on.

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.

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.

It is in great part the anxiety of being a woman that devastates the feminine body.

It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.

I think it's wrong to write in a totally esoteric language when you want to talk about things which interest a multitude of women.

There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning.