Simone de Beauvoir

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

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.

Every war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who undertake it.

The role of a retired person is no longer to possess one.

At night I would climb the steps to the Sacre-Coeur, and I would watch Paris, that futile oasis, scintillating in the wilderness of space. I would weep, because it was so beautiful, and because it was so useless.