Weakness' is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes. - Simone de Beauvoir

It was an odd experience, this bringing to life of pages born of my pen and forgotten. From time to time they interested me — they surprised me as much as if someone else had written them; yet I recognized the vocabulary, the shape of the sentences, the drive, the elliptical forms, the mannerisms. These pages were soaked through and through with my self — there was a sickening intimacy about it, like the smell of a bedroom in which one has been shut up too long.

On ne naît pas femme: on le devient.

The humanity of tomorrow will be living in its flesh and in its conscious liberty; that time will be its present and it will in turn prefer it. New relations of flesh and sentiment of which we have no conception will arise between the sexes; already, indeed, there have appeared between men and women friendships, rivalries, complicities, comradeships — chaste or sensual — which past centuries could not have conceived.