She was ready to deny the existence of space and time rather than admit that love might not be eternal.

I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.

I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others.

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...].

In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.

That's what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.

A man attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, and compassion

To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.

What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.

Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female — whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.

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

If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.

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.

All oppression creates a state of war. And this is no exception.

The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

I was made for another planet altogether. I mistook the way.

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

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)

Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.

She would never change, but one day at the touch of a fingertip she would fall to dust.

Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized.

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.

Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.

Sex pleasure in women is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.

Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to.

If the feminine issue is so absurd, is because the male's arrogance made it "a discussion

What would Prince Charming have for occupation if he had not to awaken the Sleeping beauty?

...her wings are cut and then she is blamed for not knowing how to fly.

To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.

Because we are separated everything separates us, even our efforts to join each other.

There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless.

I could see no reason for being sad. It s just that it makes me unhappy not to feel happy.

Women's mutual understanding comes from the fact that they identify themselves with each other; but for the same reason each is against the others.

Be loved, be admired, be necessary; be somebody.

Why one man rather than another? It was odd. You find yourself involved with a fellow for life just because he was the one that you met when you were nineteen.

The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power.

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

Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.

Even if one is neither vain nor self-obsessed, it is so extraordinary to be oneself - exactly oneself and no one else - and so unique, that it seems natural that one should also be unique for someone else.

The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them.

‎A day in which I don't write leaves a taste of ashes.

To abstain from politics is in itself a political attitude.

People seem to think that if you keep your head empty you automatically fill your balls.

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.

Tragedies are all right for a while: you are concerned, you are curious, you feel good. And then it gets repetitive, it doesn't advance, it grows dreadfully boring: it is so very boring, even for me.

Self-consciousness is not knowledge but a story one tells about oneself.