Quote collection
355 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
"The whole world was nothing but an exile with no hope of a return."
"I consider it almost antifeminist to say that there is a feminine nature which expresses itself differently, that a woman speaks her body more than a man, because after all, men also speak their bodies when they write. Everything is implicated in the work of a writer."
"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."
"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."
"She was trying to get rid of a religious hangover."
"A foreign country can best be understood through its literature."
"Living by proxy is always a precarious expedient."
"The American woman's inequality with men is proved by her defiant attitude."
"We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible."
"Sometimes speech is no more than a device for saying nothing - and a neater one than silence."
"It is doubtless impossible to approach any human problems with a mind free from bias."
"Ce n'est gue' re que dans les asiles que les coquettes gardent avec ente" tement une foi entie' re en des regards absents; normalement, elles re clament des te moins. Women fond of dress are hardly ever entirely satisfied not to be seen, except among the insane; usually they want witnesses."
"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."
"Picasso never thought of himself as avant-garde. I just find it a bad way to think of yourself."
"There are moments when you have to write certain things and you don't have to think of your sex. If you are writing about the population of the thirteenth district in Paris, even if you are writing on the women in the thirteenth district, there's no need to consider your sex."
"Retirement revives the sorrow of parting, the feeling of abandonment, solitude and uselessness that is caused by the loss of some beloved person."
"I think it's wrong to write in a totally esoteric language when you want to talk about things which interest a multitude of women."
"We belong to this earth. Now I can see the truth ... I love you on this earth of ours. Love me, do!"
"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."