Sometimes speech is no more than a device for saying nothing - and a neater one than silence.

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

The day had been spent in the expectation of these hours, and now they were crumbling away, becoming, in their turn, another period of expectancy...It was a journey without end, leading to an indefinite future, eternally shifting just as she was reaching the present.

Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consolation for death.

A writer is hoisted up onto a pedestal only to scrutinize him more closely and conclude that it was a mistake to put him up there in the first place.

The renewed use of lobotomy today is particularly applicable to women: Because they do routine things, it is possible to take away their spirit of revolt, of debate, of criticism, and still leave them perfectly capable of making stews or washing dishes. It's terrible, this tendency to consider women something dangerous to society.

I think that feminism permits women to speak among themselves, instead of simply being resentful, having personal complaints, which get them nowhere and which make them sick and ill-tempered, depressive and poison the lives of their husbands and children. It's much better to arrive at a collective consciousness of this problem, which is both a kind of therapy and the basis for a struggle.