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.

This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate.

Only a woman can write what it is to feel as a woman, to be a woman.

When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy it implies, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.

A life is such a strange object, at one moment translucent, at another utterly opaque, an object I make with my own hands, an object imposed on me, an object for which the world provides the raw material and then steals it from me again, pulverized by events, scattered, broken, scored yet retaining its unity; how heavy it is and how inconsistent: this contradiction breeds many misunderstandings.

Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.

It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator loaded with all the contradictions of the world.