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

"There is an odd kind of pleasure in not being able to understand anything, in being completely at sea."

"I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth was undoubtedly at the bottom of my search for an autonomous existence."

"I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to b…"

"The purpose of life is to live it."