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."