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

Ah, if only there were two of me, she thought, one who spoke and the other who listened, one who lived and one who watched, how I would love myself! I would envy no one.

Some things I loved have vanished. A great many others have been given to me

To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.

I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.

In 1949, I believed that social progress, the triumph of the proletariat, socialism would lead to the emancipation of women. But I saw that nothing came of it: first of all, that socialism was not achieved anywhere, and that in certain countries which called themselves socialist, the situation of women was no better than it was in so-called capitalist countries.

Old age is better for women than for men. First of all, they have less far to fall, since their lives are more mediocre than those of most men.