She was not to look beyond herself for the meaning of her life. - Simone de Beauvoir

To paint, to write, to engage in politics — these are not merely ‘sublimations’; here we have aims that are willed for their own sakes. To deny it is to falsify all human history.

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.

depopulates it. Nothing exists outside of his stubborn project; therefore nothing can induce him to modify his choices. And having involved his whole life with an external object which can continually escape him, he tragically feels his dependence. Even if it does not definitely disappear, the object never gives itself. The passionate man makes himself a lack of being not that there might be being, but in order to be. And he remains at a distance; he is never fulfilled.