"I choose to be free, and not to be an object."

"I am a woman, I am a writer, I am a Communist, I am an atheist."

"Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day."

"The problem with love is that it is a choice, not a feeling."

"I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself."