If I were to share Jaques' existence I would find it hard to hold my own against him, for already I found his nihilism contagious. - Simone de Beauvoir

The present enshrines the past—and in the past all history has been made by men.

Death itself does not frighten me; it is the jump I am afraid of.

I was no longer a vacant mind, an abstracted gaze, but the turbulent fragrance of the waving grain, the intimate smell of the heather moors, the dense heat of noon or the shiver of twilight; I was heavy; yet I was as vapour in the blue airs of summer and knew no bounds.