Few books are more thrilling than certain confessions, but they must be honest, and the author must have something to confess.

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[...].

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.

One is not born a woman, but becomes one.

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

Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.