There is something false in this search for a purely feminine writing style. Language, such as it is, is inherited from a masculine society, and it contains many male prejudices. We must rid language of all that. Still, a language is not something created artificially; the proletariat can't use a different language from the bourgeoisie, even if they use it differently, even if from time to time they invent something, technical words or even a kind of worker's slang, which can be very beautiful and very rich. Women can do that as well, enrich their language, clean it up.

I discovered feminism around 1970-72-precisely the time when feminism began to exist in France. Before that, there was no feminism.

Some things I loved have vanished. A great many others have been given to me

If her functioning as a female is not enough to define woman, if we decline also to explain her through "the eternal feminine," and if nevertheless we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then we must face the question: what is a woman?

To be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future.

Every time a man dies, a child dies too, and an adolescent and a young man as well; everyone weeps for the one who was dear to him.

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.