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

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.

Existence must be asserted in the present if one does not want all life to be defined as an escape toward nothingness.

As 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.

The 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.

She was ready to deny the existence of space and time rather than admit that love might not be eternal.

Writing ... is a profession that can only be learned by writing.