To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.

If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.

Art is an attempt to integrate evil.

The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women.

Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.

Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.

In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.

It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.

Why one man rather than another? It was odd. You find yourself involved with a fellow for life just because he was the one that you met when you were nineteen.

What is an adult? A child blown up by age.

One is not born a woman, but becomes one.

To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.

The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them.

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

Buying is a profound pleasure.

The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels.

Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female - whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.

All oppression creates a state of war.

Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.

This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate.

In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.

Sex pleasure in woman is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.

Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior; she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male's superiority.

Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.

To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.

It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.

All the idols made by man, however terrifying they may be, are in point of fact subordinate to him, and that is why he will always have it in his power to destroy them.

Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.

I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity.

Even if one is neither vain nor self-obsessed, it is so extraordinary to be oneself – exactly oneself and no one else.

To lose confidence in one's body is to lose confidence in oneself.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.