immortality is a terrible curse.

I had never believed in the sacred nature of literature. God had died when I was fourteen.

I consider it almost antifeminist to say that there is a feminine nature which expresses itself differently, that a woman speaks her body more than a man, because after all, men also speak their bodies when they write. Everything is implicated in the work of a writer.

You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do or don't do.

The torment that so many young women know, bound hand and foot by love and motherhood, without having forgotten their former dreams.

I have never read a really good novel written by a man where women are portrayed as they truly are. They can be portrayed externally very well - Stendhal's Madame de Renal, for example - but only as seen from the outside.

Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise." (p. 248)