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.
Simone de BeauvoirExistence must be asserted in the present if one does not want all life to be defined as an escape toward nothingness.
Simone de BeauvoirAs long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.
Simone de BeauvoirThe nearer I come to the end of my days, the more I am enabled to see that strange thing, a life, and to see it whole.
Simone de Beauvoir