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If You Try Consciously To Be Avant-garde, It's A Little Dangerous, Like The Present State Of Modern Painting, Where Dealers Try To Be Avant-garde, And Under This Pretext, Painters Take Some Old Scraps And Call It Avant-garde.

-Simone De Beauvoir

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If You Try Consciously

Simone De Beauvoir

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If You Try Consciously To Be Avant-garde, It's A Little Dangerous, Like The Present State Of Modern Painting, Where Dealers Try To Be Avant-garde, And Under This Pretext, Painters Take Some Old Scraps And Call It Avant-garde.

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--there You Are. The Sight Of The Changing World Is Miraculous And Heartbreaking, Both At The Same Time. --but So It Is For Me Too. The Heartbreaking Side Of Growing Old Is Not In The Things Around One But In Oneself.

Woman Is Shut Up In A Kitchen Or In A Boudoir, And Astonishment Is Expressed That Her Horizon Is Limited. Her Wings Are Clipped, And It Is Found Deplorable That She Cannot Fly.

Indeed, There Is Nothing More Arbitrary Than Intervening As A Stranger In A Destiny Which Is Not Ours.

Men Create Their Own Gods And Thus Have Some Slight Understanding That They Are Self-fabricated. Women Are Much More Susceptible, Because They Are Completely Oppressed By Men; They Take Men At Their Word And Believe In The Gods That Men Have Made Up. The Situation Of Women, Their Culture, Makes Them Kneel More Often Before The Gods That Have Been Created By Men Than Men Themselves Do, Who Know What They've Done. To This Extent, Women Will Be More Fanatical, Whether It Is For Fascism Or For Totalitarianism.

To Will Oneself Moral And To Will Oneself Free Are One And The Same Decision.

I Think That The Second Sex Will Seem An Old, Dated Book, After A While. But Nonetheless, A Book Which Will Have Made Its Contribution. At Least, I Hope So.

If I Were Proud Of Anything In My Life, It Would Be Of Our Love. I Feel We Have To Tell To Each Other As Many Things As We Can, So We Are Not Only Lovers, But The Closest Of Friends At The Same Time.

As Long As There Have Been Men And They Have Lived, They Have All Felt This Tragic Ambiguity Of Their Condition, But As Long As There Have Been Philosophers And They Have Thought, Most Of Them Have Tried To Mask It.

To Create A Language All Of A Piece Which Would Be A Women's Language, That I Find Quite Insane. There Does Not Exist A Mathematics Which Is Only A Women's Mathematics, Or A Feminine Science.

There Is The Problem Of Unpaid Labor, Such As Housework, Which Represents Millions And Millions Of Unsalaried Work Hours And On Which Masculine Society Is Firmly Based. To Put An End To This Would Be To Send The Present-day Capitalist System Flying In A Single Blow. Only We Can't Do It By Ourselves; There Have To Be Other Kinds Of Attacks On The System. So A Certain Alliance With Revolutionary Systems Is Necessary, Even Masculine Ones.

All The Idols Made By Man, However Terrifying They May Be, Are In Point Of Fact Subordinate To Him, And That Is Why He Will Always Have It In His Power To Destroy Them.

My Life Was Hurrying, Racing Tragically Toward Its End. And Yet At The Same Time It Was Dripping So Slowly, So Very Slowly Now, Hour By Hour, Minute By Minute. One Always Has To Wait Until The Sugar Melts, The Memory Dies, The Wound Scars Over, The Sun Sets, The Unhappiness Lifts And Fades Away.

A Man Is In The Right In Being A Man; It Is The Woman Who Is In The Wrong.

The Emancipation Of Women Must Be The Work Of Women Themselves, Independent Of The Class Struggle.

La Femme?sait Que Quand On La Regarde On Ne La Distingue Pas De Son Apparence: Elle Est Juge E, Respecte E, De Sire E A' Travers Sa Toilette. Woman?knows That When She Is Looked At She Is Not Considered Apart From Her Appearance: She Is Judged, Respected, Desired, By And Through Her Toilette.

I Take On A Shape And An Existence Only If I First Throw Myself Into The World By Loving, By Doing.

No One Is More Arrogant Toward Women, More Aggressive Or Scornful, Than The Man Who Is Anxious About His Virility.

I Was Very Fond Of Lagneau’s Phrase: “i Have No Comfort But In My Absolute Despair.

Picasso Never Thought Of Himself As Avant-garde. I Just Find It A Bad Way To Think Of Yourself.

From The Very Beginning, Existentialism Defined Itself As A Philosophy Of Ambiguity.

I Was Struck By The Absence, Even Among Very Young Boys And Girls, Of Any Interior Motivation; They Were Incapable Of Thinking, Of Inventing, Of Imagining, Of Choosing, Of Deciding For Themselves; This Incapacity Was Expressed By Their Conformism; In Every Domain Of Life They Employed Only The Abstract Measure Of Money, Because They Were Unable To Trust To Their Own Judgment.

Literature Is Born When Something In Life Goes Slightly Adrift.

Sometimes You Can Accept An Important Post, On Condition That It Really Puts You In A Position To Help Women. Unfortunately, Women Who Have Important Posts Very Often Adopt Masculine Standards-power, Ambition, Personal Success - And Cut Themselves Off From Other Women.

It Is So Difficult Not To Become Vain About One's Own Good Luck.

There Is A Poetry In Making Preserves; The Housewife Has Caught Duration In The Snare Of Sugar, She Has Enclosed Life In Jars.

The Women Of Today Are In A Fair Way To Dethrone The Myth Of Femininity; They Are Beginning To Affirm Their Independence In Concrete Ways; But They Do Not Easily Succeed In Living Completely The Life Of A Human Being.

The Earthly Meaning Of Eternal Life Was Death, And She Refused To Die.

I Think There Is A Great Tendency Toward Autobiography Among Women Today. It Is Perhaps Facile - And I Say That Even Though I Have Written One Myself.

Literature Takes Its Revenge On Reality By Making It The Slave Of Fiction.

The American Woman's Inequality With Men Is Proved By Her Defiant Attitude.

Capabilities Are Clearly Manifested Only When They Have Been Realized.

We Must Not Confuse The Present With The Past. With Regard To The Past, No Further Action Is Possible.

Christian Ideology Has Contributed No Little To The Oppression Of Woman.

Old Age Is Better For Women Than For Men. First Of All, They Have Less Far To Fall, Since Their Lives Are More Mediocre Than Those Of Most Men.

To Will Freedom And To Will To Disclose Being Are One And The Same Choice; Hence, Freedom Takes A Positive And Constructive Step Which Causes Being To Pass To Existence In A Movement Which Is Constantly Surpassed.

Man Is A Talking Animal And He Will Always Let Himself Be Swayed By The Power Of The Word. Machines Won't Change Human Nature.

Every War, Every Revolution, Demands The Sacrifice Of A Generation, Of A Collectivity, By Those Who Undertake It.

It Is Not In Giving Life But In Risking Life That Man Is Raised Above The Animal; That Is Why Superiority Has Been Accorded In Humanity Not To The Sex That Brings Forth But To That Which Kills.

Every Time I Start On A New Book, I Am A Beginner Again. I Doubt Myself, I Grow Discouraged, All The Work Accomplished In The Past Is As Though It Never Was, My First Drafts Are So Shapeless That It Seems Impossible To Go On With The Attempt At All, Right Up Until The Moment - Always Imperceptible, There, Too, There Is A Break - When It Is Has Become Impossible Not To Finish It.

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.

It Is Doubtless Impossible To Approach Any Human Problems With A Mind Free From Bias.

The Curse Which Lies Upon Marriage Is That Too Often The Individuals Are Joined In Their Weakness Rather Than In Their Strength -each Asking From The Other Instead Of Finding Pleasure In Giving. It Is Even More Deceptive To Dream Of Gaining Through The Child A Plenitude, A Warmth, A Value, Which One Is Unable To Create For Oneself; The Child Brings Joy Only To The Woman Who Is Capable Of Disinterestedly Desiring The Happiness Of Another, To One Who Without Being Wrapped Up In Self Seeks To Transcend Her Own Existence.

Words Have To Murder Reality Before They Can Hold It Captive.

Anyway I Know Only Too Well That All Life Is Nothing But A Brief Reprieve From Death.

If You Are Truly On The Left, If You Reject Ideas Of Power And Hierarchy, What You Want Is Equality. Otherwise, It Won't Work At All.

I Believe That We Must Use Language. If It Is Used In A Feminist Perspective, With A Feminist Sensibility, Language Will Find Itself Changed In A Feminist Manner. It Will Nonetheless Be The Language. You Can't Not Use This Universal Instrument; You Can't Create An Artificial Language, In My Opinion. But Naturally, Each Writer Must Use It In His/her Own Way.

What Would Prince Charming Have For Occupation If He Had Not To Awaken The Sleeping Beauty?

It Is Impossible To Do Anything For Anyone.

The Torment That So Many Young Women Know, Bound Hand And Foot By Love And Motherhood, Without Having Forgotten Their Former Dreams.

Oppression Tries To Defend Itself By Its Utility. But We Have Seen That It Is One Of The Lies Of The Serious Mind To Attempt To Give The Word "useful" An Absolute Meaning; Nothing Is Useful If It Is Not Useful To Man; Nothing Is Useful To Man If The Latter Is Not In A Position To Define His Own Ends And Values, If He Is Not Free.

In The Face Of An Obstacle Which Is Impossible To Overcome, Stubbornness Is Stupid.

The Body Is Not A Thing, It Is A Situation: It Is Our Grasp On The World And Our Sketch Of Our Project

You Have To Start From Where You Are Today And From What Can Be Done.

To Protest In The Name Of Morality Against 'excesses' Or 'abuses' Is An Error Which Hints On Active Complicity. There Are No 'abuses' Or 'excesses' Here, Simpily An All-pervasive System.

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.

I Discovered Feminism Around 1970-72-precisely The Time When Feminism Began To Exist In France. Before That, There Was No Feminism.

Youth And What The Italians So Prettily Call Stamina. The Vigor, The Fire, That Enables You To Love And Create. When You've Lost That, You've Lost Everything.

Lost Everything

A Couple Who Go On Living Together Merely Because That Was How They Began, Without Any Other Reason: Was That What We Were Turning Into?

The Day Knowledge Was Preferred To Wisdom And Mere Usefulness To Beauty. . . . Only A Moral Revolution -- Not A Social Or A Political Revolution -- Only A Moral Revolution Would Lead Man Back To His Lost Truth.

Political Revolution

The Whole World Was Nothing But An Exile With No Hope Of A Return.

For Years I Thought My Work Still Lay Ahead, And Now I Find It Is Behind Me: There Was No Moment When It Took Place.

He Reflected. 'i Know A Lot Of Different Kids Of People; What I Want Is To Show Each Of Them How The Others Really Are. You Hear So Many Lies!

However Gifted An Individual Is At The Outset, If His Or Her Talents Cannot Be Developed Because Of His Or Her Social Condition, Because Of The Surrounding Circumstances, These Talents Will Be Still-born.

I Wish That Every Human Life Might Be Pure Transparent Freedom.

Buying Is Profound Pleasure.

Sometimes Speech Is No More Than A Device For Saying Nothing - And A Neater One Than Silence.

It Is For Man To Establish The Reign Of Liberty In The Midst Of The World Of The Given. To Gain The Supreme Victory, It Is Necessary, For One Thing, That By And Through Their Natural Differentiation Men And Women Unequivocally Affirm Their Brotherhood.

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.

Retirement May Be Looked Upon Either As A Prolonged Holiday Or As A Rejection, A Being Thrown On To The Scrap-heap.

One Day I'll Be Old, Dead, Forgotten. And At This Very Moment, While I'm Sitting Here Thinking These Things, A Man In A Dingy Hotel Room Is Thinking, "i Will Always Be Here."

For Me, The Problem Of Time Is Linked Up With That Of Death, With The Thought That We Inevitably Draw Closer And Closer To It, With The Horror Of Decay.

Women Have Been Burnt As Witches Simply Because They Were Beautiful.

I Would Stand Transfixed Before The Windows Of The Confectioners' Shops, Fascinated By The Luminous Sparkle Of Candied Fruits, The Cloudy Lustre Of Jellies, The Kaleidoscope Inflorescence Of Acidulated Fruit Drops - Red, Green, Orange, Violet: I Coveted The Colours Themselves As Much As The Pleasure They Promised Me.

Today, However, We Are Having A Hard Time Living Because We Are So Bent On Outwitting Death.

It's True That What You Find In New York Is Something Other Than America. Only Small Towns And Small Countries Are Self-satisfied; A Real Capital Goes Beyond Its Borders.

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.

I Never Thought Of Myself As Being In The Avant-garde. I Said What I Had To Say, As I Was Able To Say It.

There Is No Such Thing As A Natural Death: Nothing That Happens To A Man Is Ever Natural, Since His Presence Calls The World Into Question. All Men Must Die: But For Every Man His Death Is An Accident And, Even If He Knows It And Consents To It, An Unjustifiable Violation.

One Is Not Conceived A Lady, One Turns Into One.

It's Not A Very Big Step From Contentment To Complacency.

What Is An Adult? A Child Blown Up By Age.

Some Things I Loved Have Vanished. A Great Many Others Have Been Given To Me

Living By Proxy Is Always A Precarious Expedient.

To Give Space When What One Most Yearns For Is Closeness, That Is Both The Great Test And Great Tragedy Of Love.

My Worst Mistake Has Been Not Grasping That Time Goes By. It Was Going By And There I Was, Set In The Attitude Of The Ideal Wife Of An Ideal Husband. Instead Of Bringing Our Sexual Relationship To Life Again I Brooded Happily Over Memories Of Our Former Nights Together.

I Don't Want To Be Just Another Blade Of Grass.

A Darwinian Nation Of Economic Fitness Abhors Idleness, Dependence, Non-productivity.

I Would Certainly Like To See Some Young Women Take Up Psychoanalysis Seriously And Reconstruct It From An Absolutely New Viewpoint.

Many Things Would Be Changed For Americans If They Would Only Admit That There Is Ill-luck In This World And That Misfortune Is Not A Priori A Crime.

I Went To Get A Detective Story. You Have To Kill Time. But Time Will Kill Me Too - And There´s The True, Preestablished Balance.

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.

Heterosexuality Is

History Is A Great Cemetery: Men, Deeds, Ideas Are Always Dying As Soon As They Are Born.

The Arrogance Of Some Christians Would Close Heaven To Them If, To Their Misfortune, It Existed.

When Someone You Love Dies You Pay For The Sin Of Outliving Her With A Thousand Piercing Regrets.

Feminism Is One Way Of Attacking Society As It Now Exists.

Immortality Is A Terrible Curse.

To Be Oneself, Simply Oneself, Is So Amazing And Utterly Unique An Experience That It's Hard To Convince Oneself So Singular A Thing Happens To Everybody.

Obviously, Everything Has Always Been Defined By The Dominant Ideology. But The Dominant Ideology Has Been Able To Accept Women's Literature As Well As Men's Literature. I Would Say That Women Have Been Hindered From Creating For A Variety Of Reasons, As Virginia Woolf So Admirably Explained In A Room Of One's Own. When They Have Created, On The Whole They Have Been Recognized. In Literature It Hasn't Been Nearly As Oppressive As In, Say, Painting, Where Even The Existence Of So Many Women Painters Has Always Been Denied.

Christianity Gave Eroticism Its Savor Of Sin And Legend When It Endowed The Human Female With A Soul.

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. The Housewife Wears Herself Out Marking Time: She Makes Nothing, Simply Perpetuates The Present … Eating, Sleeping, Cleaning – The Years No Longer Rise Up Towards Heaven, They Lie Spread Out Ahead, Grey And Identical. The Battle Against Dust And Dirt Is Never Won.

This Is Certainly A Very Tricky Point: How To Ally Yourself To Other Leftist Forces Without Losing Your Feminist Specificity.

The Communists, Following Hegel, Speak Of Humanity And Its Future As Of Some Monolithic Individuality. I Was Attacking This Illusion.

The Individuals Who Seem To Us Most Outstanding, Who Are Honored With The Name Of Genius, Are Those Who Have Proposed To Enact The Fate Of All Humanity In Their Personal Existences.

If You Haven't Been Happy Very Young, You Can Still Be Happy Later On, But It's Much Harder. You Need More Luck.

We Can Reorient Science - For Example, A Kind Of Medicine Much More Directed Toward The Enormous Number Of Women's Health Problems Which Are Neglected Now. But The Original Givens Of This Science Are The Same For Men And For Women. Women Simply Have To Steal The Instrument; They Don't Have To Break It, Or Try, A Priori, To Make Of It Something Totally Different. Steal It And Use It For Their Own Good.

Existence Must Be Asserted In The Present If One Does Not Want All Life To Be Defined As An Escape Toward Nothingness.

Tonight, Once More, Life Sinks Its Teeth Into My Heart.

I Cannot Be Angry At God, In Whom I Do Not Believe.

Positive Atheism

There Is Only One Solution If Old Age Is Not To Be An Absurd Parody Of Our Former Life, And That Is To Go On Pursuing Ends That Give Our Existence A Meaning.

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?

In Truth We Need To Change The Society Itself, Men As Well As Women, To Change Everything.

There's Something Tragic About You. Your Feeling For The Absolute. You Were Made To Believe In God And Spend Your Life In A Convent.' There Are Too Many With That Vocation. God Would Have Had To Love Only Me.

Choice Springs From The Totality Of The Person. Thus, To Study, To Analyze What A Person Is, Does Not Eliminate The Idea Of Freedom.

They [americans] Want To Believe That Good And Evil Can Be Defined In Precise Categories, That Good Is Already, Or Will Be Easily Achieved. ... If This Optimism Appears Too Superficial, They Will Try To Create A Kind Of Anti-god: The U.s.s.r. That Is Evil, And It Only Needs To Be Annihilated To Re-establish The Reign Of Good.

Only A Woman Can Write What It Is To Feel As A Woman, To Be A Woman.

The Individual Is Defined Only By His Relationship To The World And To Other Individuals; He Exists Only By Transcending Himself, And His Freedom Can Be Achieved Only Through The Freedom Of Others. He Justifies His Existence By A Movement Which, Like Freedom, Springs From His Heart But Which Leads Outside Of Himself.

There Has To Be A Certain Relationship Between The Life And The Writing Style, And That Is Really A Problem.

I Should Like To Be The Landscape Which I Am Contemplating, I Should Like This Sky, This Quiet Water To Think Themselves Within Me, That It Might Be I Whom They Express In Flesh And Bone, And I Remain At A Distance. But It Is Also By This Distance That The Sky And The Water Exist Before Me. My Contemplation Is An Excruciation Only Because It Is Also A Joy. I Can Not Appropriate The Snow Field Where I Slide. It Remains Foreign, Forbidden, But I Take Delight In This Very Effort Toward An Impossible Possession. I Experience It As A Triumph, Not As A Defeat.

Truthfully Speaking, Women Are Dangerous, Even Those Who Aren't Feminists, Because There Has Always Been A Women's Revolt. Only It Has Usually Translated Itself Into Solitary, Individualist, Disagreeable Manifestations - The Whole History Of The Taming Of The Shrew, The Woman-shrew. They Weren't Shrews Without Cause.

That A Whole Part Of The Middle Class Detests Me... Is Utterly Normal. I Would Be Troubled If The Contrary Were True.

To Lose Confidence In One’s Body Is To Lose Confidence In Oneself.

You Can't Address Yourself To Women By Speaking A Language Which No Average Woman Will Understand. In My Opinion, It's Wrong.

Sign Of Old Age: Distress At All Leave-takings, All Separations. And The Sadness Of Memories, Because I'm Aware They're Condemned To Death.

The Most Mediocre Of Males Feels Himself A Demigod As Compared With Women.

‎a Day In Which I Don't Write Leaves A Taste Of Ashes.

To Make Oneself An Object, To Make Oneself Passive, Is A Very Different Thing From Being A Passive Object.

Writing Is A Trade ... Which Is Learned By Writing.

To Be A Woman, If Not A Defect, Is At Least A Peculiarity.

But Women Do Not Say 'we', Except At Some Congress Of Feminists Or Similar Formal Demonstration; Men Say 'women', And Women Use The Same Word In Referring To Themselves.

She Was Trying To Get Rid Of A Religious Hangover.

She Offered Her Mouth To Him, As If Enchanted. A Persian Princess, A Little Indian, A Fox, A Morning Glory, A Lovely Wisteria--it Always Pleased Them When You Told Them They Looked Like Something, Like Something Else.

To Be Feminist Doesn't Mean Simply To Do Nothing, To Reduce Yourself To Total Impotence Under The Pretext Of Refusing Masculine Values. There Is A Problematic, A Very Difficult Dialectic Between Accepting Power And Refusing It, Accepting Certain Masculine Values, And Wanting To Transform Them. I Think It's Worth A Try.

What An Odd Thing A Diary Is: The Things You Omit Are More Important Than Those You Put In.

I Am Awfully Greedy; I Want Everything From Life. I Want To Be A Woman And To Be A Man, To Have Many Friends And To Have Loneliness, To Work Much And Write Good Books, To Travel And Enjoy Myself, To Be Selfish And To Be Unselfish… You See, It Is Difficult To Get All Which I Want. And Then When I Do Not Succeed I Get Mad With Anger.

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.

Whatever The Country, Capitalist Or Socialist, Man Was Everywhere Crushed By Technology, Made A Stranger To His Own Work, Imprisoned, Forced Into Stupidity.

Old Age Was Growing Inside Me. It Kept Catching My Eye From The Depths Of The Mirror. I Was Paralyzed Sometimes As I Saw It Making Its Way Toward Me So Steadily When Nothing Inside Me Was Ready For It.

A Foreign Country Can Best Be Understood Through Its Literature.

Between Women Love Is Contemplative; Caresses Are Intended Less To Gain Possession Of The Other Than Gradually To Re-create The Self Through Her; Separateness Is Abolished, There Is No Struggle, No Victory, No Defeat; In Exact Reciprocity Each Is At Once Subject And Object, Sovereign And Slave; Duality Become Mutuality.

It's Frightening To Think That You Mark Your Children Merely By Being Yourself. It Seems Unfair. You Can't Assume The Responsibility For Everything You Do --or Don't Do.

I Think That Freud Understood Absolutely Nothing About Women - As He Himself Said.

A Freedom Which Is Interested Only In Denying Freedom Must Be Denied. And It Is Not True That The Recognition Of The Freedom Of Others Limits My Own Freedom: 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; The Existence Of Others As A Freedom Defines My Situation And Is Even The Condition Of My Own Freedom. I Am Oppressed If I Am Thrown Into Prison, But Not If I Am Kept From Throwing My Neighbor Into Prison.

The Father's Life Is Surrounded By Mysterious Prestige: The Hours He Spends In The Home, The Room Where He Works, The Objects Around Him, His Occupations, His Habits, Have A Sacred Character. It Is He Who Feeds The Family, Is The One In Charge And The Head. Usually He Works Outside The Home, And It Is Through Him That The Household Communicates With The Rest Of The World: He Is The Embodiment Of This Adventurous, Immense, Difficult, And Marvelous World; He Is Transcendence, He Is God.

Authentic Love Must Be Founded On Reciprocal Recognition Of Two Freedoms. For Each Of Them, Love Would Be The Revelation Of The Self Through The Gift Of The Self And The Enrichment Of The Universe.

To Emancipate Woman Is To Refuse To Confine Her To The Relations She Bears To Man, Not To Deny Them To Her; Let Her Have Her Independent Existence And She Will Continue Nonetheless To Exist For Him Also: Mutually Recognising Each Other As Subject, Each Will Yet Remain For The Other An Other...when We Abolish The Slavery Of Half Of Humanity, Together With The Whole System Of Hypocrisy That It Implies, Then The 'division' Of Humanity Will Reveal Its Genuine Significance And The Human Couple Will Find Its True Form.

Regardless Of The Staggering Dimensions Of The World About Us, The Density Of Our Ignorance, The Risks Of Catastrophes To Come, And Our Individual Weakness Within The Immense Collectivity, The Fact Remains That We Are Absolutely Free Today If We Choose To Will Our Existence In Its Finiteness, A Finiteness Which Is Open On The Infinite. And In Fact, Any Man Who Has Known Real Loves, Real Revolts, Real Desires, And Real Will Knows Quite Well That He Has No Need Of Any Outside Guarantee To Be Sure Of His Goals; Their Certitude Comes From His Own Drive.

The Role Of A Retired Person Is No Longer To Possess One.

The Younger And Healthier A Woman Is And The More Her New And Glossy Body Seems Destined For Eternal Freshness, The Less Useful Is Artifice; But The Carnal Weakness Of This Prey That Man Takes And Its Ominous Deterioration Always Have To Be Hidden From Him...in Any Case, The More Traits And Proportions Of A Woman Seem Contrived, The More She Delighted The Heart Of Man Because She Seemed To Escape The Metamorphosis Of Natural Things. The Result Is This Strange Paradox That By Desiring To Grasp Nature, But Transfigured, In Woman, Man Destines Her To Artifice.

One Is Not Born A Genius, One Becomes A Genius; And The Feminine Situation Has Up To The Present Rendered This Becoming Practically Impossible.

Literature Is Always What The Dominant Ideology Recognizes As Literature.

He Formed His Sentences Hesitantly And Then Threw Them At Me With Such Force That I Felt As If I Were Receiving A Present Each Time

As Long As The Family And The Myth Of The Family ... Have Not Been Destroyed, Women Will Still Be Oppressed.

Each Person Has His Or Her Own Very Particular History And After All, The Unconscious Is The Most Secret Part Of Ourselves.

If Women Really Did Have Complete Equality With Men, Society Would Be Completely Overturned.

I Had Never Believed In The Sacred Nature Of Literature. God Had Died When I Was Fourteen.

I Realized That Even If We Went On Talking Till Judgment Day, I Would Still Find The Time All Too Short.

…but All Day Long I Would Be Training Myself To Think, To Understand, To Criticize, To Know Myself; I Was Seeking For The Absolute Truth: This Preoccupation Did Not Exactly Encourage Polite Conversation.

Ah, If Only There Were Two Of Me, She Thought, One Who Spoke And The Other Who Listened, One Who Lived And One Who Watched, How I Would Love Myself! I Would Envy No One.

Anais Nin Shows An Occasional Grace In Writing, But Her Work Is Quite Foreign To Me, Precisely Because She Wants So Much To Be Feminine And Not Feminist. And Then She Is So Gaga Before So Many Men. She Talks About Men I Know In France, Men Who Were Less Than Nothing, And She Considers Them Kings, Extraordinary People.

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 The Absolute Truth.

Eating, Sleeping, Cleaning - The Years No Longer Rise Up Toward Heaven, They Lie Spread Out Ahead, Gray And Identical. The Battle Against Dust And Dirt Is Never Won. Washing, Ironing, Sweeping, Ferreting Out Rolls Of Lint From Under Wardrobes - All This Halting Of Decay Is Also The Denial Of Life; For Time Simultaneously Creates And Destroys, And Only Its Negative Aspect Concerns The Housekeeper.

Dwelling-place And Food Are Useful For Life But Give It No Significance: The Immediate Goals Of The Housekeeper Are Only Means, Not True Ends.

Let Women Be Provided With Living Strength Of Their Own.

Society Turns Away From The Aged Worker As Though He Belonged To Another Species. That Is Why The Whole Question Is Buried In A Conspiracy Of Silence. Old Age Exposes The Failure Of Our Entire Civilization.

Therefore The Misfortune Which Comes To Man As A Result Of The Fact That He Was A Child Is That His Freedom Was First Concealed From Him And That All His Life He Will Be Nostalgic For The Time When He Did Not Know It's Exigencies.

To Be Moral Is To Discover Fundamentally Ones Own Being.

Habit Has A Kind Of Poetry.

It Must Be Said In Addition That The Men With The Most Scrupulous Respect For Embryonic Life Are Also Those Who Are Most Zealous When It Comes To Condemning Adults To Death In War.

But I Must Admit I Didn´t Like That Idea; Do The Same Thing As Everyone Else. Eating To Live, Living To Eat - That Had Been The Nightmare Of My Adolescence. If It Meant Going Back To That, If Would Be Just As Well To Turn On The Gas At Once. But I Suppose Everyone Thinks Of Things Like That: Let´s Turn On The Gas At Once. And You Don´t Turn It On.

Live With No Time-out.

The Renewed Use Of Lobotomy Today Is Particularly Applicable To Women: Because They Do Routine Things, It Is Possible To Take Away Their Spirit Of Revolt, Of Debate, Of Criticism, And Still Leave Them Perfectly Capable Of Making Stews Or Washing Dishes. It's Terrible, This Tendency To Consider Women Something Dangerous To Society.

Hegel Held That The Two Sexes Were Of Necessity Different, The One Being Active And The Other Passive, And Of Course The Female Would Be The Passive One.

The Most Sympathetic Of Men Never Fully Comprehend Woman's Concrete Situation.

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.

There Is Not A Single Line In This Diary That Does Not Call For A Correction Or A Denial...yes: Throughout These Pages I Meant What I Was Writing And I Meant The Opposite; Reading Them Again I Feel Completely Lost...i Was Lying To Myself. How I Lied To Myself!

Marriage Is A Career Which Brings About More Benefits Than Many Others.

It Is Only On Posters And In Advertisement Pages That Americans Have Those Chubby Cheeks, Expanding Smiles, Smooth Looks, And Faces Flushed With Well-being. In Fact, Almost All Are At Odds With Themselves; Drink Offers A Remedy For This Inner Malady Of Which Boredom Is The Most Usual Sign: As Drinking Is Accepted By Society, It Does Not Appear As A Sign Of Their [americans'] Inability To Adapt Themselves; It Is Rather The Adapted Form Of Inadaptability.

There Was A Time, In The Nineteenth Century, For Example, When Women Spoke Mostly About The House, Children, Birth, And So Forth, Because It Was Their Domain. That's Changing A Little, Now.

Marriage Is Traditionally The Destiny Offered To Women By Society. Most Women Are Married Or Have Been, Or Plan To Be Or Suffer From Not Being.

And Without A Doubt It Is More Comfortable To Endure Blind Bondage Than To Work For One's Liberation; The Dead, Too, Are Better Suited To The Earth Than The Living.

One Is Not Born, But Rather Becomes, A Woman.

If You Try Consciously To Be Avant-garde, It's A Little Dangerous, Like The Present State Of Modern Painting, Where Dealers Try To Be Avant-garde, And Under This Pretext, Painters Take Some Old Scraps And Call It Avant-garde.

Weakness' Is Weakness Only In Light Of The Aims Man Sets For Himself, The Instruments At His Disposal And The Laws He Imposes.

All The Opportunities You Let Slip By! The Idea, The Inspiration Just Doesn´t Come Fast Enough. Instead Of Being Open, You´re Closed Up Tight. That´s The Worst Sin Of All - The Sin Of Omission.

Society Cares For The Individual Only So Far As He Is Profitable.

In Every Society The Artist Or Writer Remains An Outsider.

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.

In A Way, Literature Is True Than Life,' He Said To Himself. 'on Paper, You Say Exactly And Completely What You Feel. How Easy It Is To Break Things Off On Paper! You Hate, You Shout, You Kill, You Commit Suicide; You Carry Things To The Very End. And That's Why It's False. But It's Damned Satisfying. In Life, You're Constantly Denying Yourself, And Others Are Always Contradicting You. On Paper, I Make Time Stand Still And I Impose My Convictions On The Whole World; They Become The Only Reality.

Work Almost Always Has A Double Aspect: It Is A Bondage, A Wearisome Drudgery; But It Is Also A Source Of Interest, A Steadying Element, A Factor That Helps To Integrate The Worker With Society. Retirement May Be Looked Upon Either As A Prolonged Holiday Or As A Rejection, A Being Thrown On To The Scrap-heap.

If The Writer Is A Woman, Feminist Or Not, It Will Give The Language Something That It Would Not Have If It Had Been Used By A Man.

Let Women Be Provided With Living Strength Of Their Own. Let Them Have The Means To Attack The World And Wrest From It Their Own Subsistence, And Their Dependence Will Be Abolished -- That Of Man Also.

The Curse Which Lies Upon Marriage Is That Too Often The Individuals Are Joined In Their Weakness Rather Than In Their Strength - Each Asking From The Other Instead Of Finding Pleasure In Giving.

To Refuse Everything, To Say, Even When There Is Something Which Really Should Be Done, "ah, That's No Longer Feminist," Is A Pessimistic, Even Masochistic Tendency In Women, The Result Of Having Been Habituated To Inertia, To Pessimism.

In Fact, People Seem To Be Tired Of Fiction Now. There Are So Many Other Ways Of Exploring Humanity - By Ethnology, Psychoanalysis, And So On. It's A Little Boring To Make Up Stories. So Many People Think That It's Better To Be Very Close To Reality And To Recount One's Life As It Is Rather Than To Fictionalize, As They Say, That Is To Transpose, And Therefore To Cheat.

The Past Is Not A Peaceful Landscape Lying There Behind Me, A Country In Which I Can Stroll Wherever I Please, And Will Gradually Show Me All Its Secret Hills And Dales. As I Was Moving Forward, So It Was Crumbling. Most Of The Wreckage That Can Be Seen Is Colourless, Distorted, Frozen: Its Meaning Escapes Me... All That's Left Is A Skeleton. I Shall Never Find My Plans Again, My Hopes And Fears - I Shall Not Find Myself.

It's So Easy To Be Mistaken About The Future. Sometimes There Are Avant-gardes Which Believe Themselves To Be The Avant-garde And Which Later Find Themselves To Be Absolutely Dated.

All Success Cloaks A Surrender

Since It Is The Other Within Us Who Is Old, It Is Natural That The Revelation Of Our Age Should Come To Us From Outside --from Others. We Do Not Accept It Willingly.

The Sahara Was A Spectacle As Alive As The Sea. The Tints Of The Dunes Changed According To The Time Of Day And The Angle Of The Light: Golden As Apricots From Far Off, When We Drove Close To Them They Turned To Freshly Made Butter; Behind Us They Grew Pink; From Sand To Rock, The Materials Of Which The Desert Was Made Varied As Much As Its Tints.

Whether You Think Of It As Heavenly Or As Earthly, If You Love Life Immortality Is No Consolation For Death.

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