I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me. My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy. I can not appropriate the snow field where i slide. It remains foreign, forbidden, but I take delight in this very effort toward an impossible possession. I experience it as a triumph, not as a defeat.
Simone de BeauvoirThe emancipation of women must be the work of women themselves, independent of the class struggle.
Simone de BeauvoirMy worst mistake has been not grasping that time goes by. It was going by and there I was, set in the attitude of the ideal wife of an ideal husband. Instead of bringing our sexual relationship to life again I brooded happily over memories of our former nights together.
Simone de BeauvoirThe body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project
Simone de BeauvoirTo give space when what one most yearns for is closeness, that is both the great test and great tragedy of love.
Simone de Beauvoir