Jealousy is not contemptible, real love has a beak and claws. Simone de Beauvoir More Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir More Quotes From Simone de Beauvoir Women's mutual understanding comes from the fact that they identify themselves with each other; but for the same reason each is against the others. Simone de Beauvoir understanding reason facts I think there is a great tendency toward autobiography among women today. It is perhaps facile - and I say that even though I have written one myself. Simone de Beauvoir tendencies today thinking Tragedies are all right for a while: you are concerned, you are curious, you feel good. And then it gets repetitive, it doesn't advance, it grows dreadfully boring: it is so very boring, even for me. Simone de Beauvoir boring feel-good tragedy There are jobs that can be done equally well by men or by women and that finally you can't see a difference. But from the moment that you involve yourself fully in writing a novel, for example, or an essay, then you are involved as a woman, in the same way that you can't deny your nationality - you are French, you are a man, you are a woman... all this passes into the writing. Simone de Beauvoir writing jobs men 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. Simone de Beauvoir writing sex thinking Virginia Woolf thought a lot about her own sex when she wrote. In the best sense of the word, her writing is very feminine, and by that I mean that women are supposed to be very sensitive to all the sensations of nature, much more so than men, much more contemplative. It's this quality that marks her best works. Simone de Beauvoir writing mean sex The past is not a peaceful landscape lying there behind me, a country in which I can stroll wherever I please, and will gradually show me all its secret hills and dales. As I was moving forward, so it was crumbling. Most of the wreckage that can be seen is colourless, distorted, frozen: its meaning escapes me... all that's left is a skeleton. I shall never find my plans again, my hopes and fears - I shall not find myself. Simone de Beauvoir country lying moving Choice springs from the totality of the person. Thus, to study, to analyze what a person is, does not eliminate the idea of freedom. Simone de Beauvoir choices spring ideas If you try consciously to be avant-garde, it's a little dangerous, like the present state of modern painting, where dealers try to be avant-garde, and under this pretext, painters take some old scraps and call it avant-garde. Simone de Beauvoir avant-garde littles trying Even if one is neither vain nor self-obsessed, it is so extraordinary to be oneself - exactly oneself and no one else - and so unique, that it seems natural that one should also be unique for someone else. Simone de Beauvoir unique self natural In fact, people seem to be tired of fiction now. There are so many other ways of exploring humanity - by ethnology, psychoanalysis, and so on. It's a little boring to make up stories. So many people think that it's better to be very close to reality and to recount one's life as it is rather than to fictionalize, as they say, that is to transpose, and therefore to cheat. Simone de Beauvoir tired reality thinking I am not at all for a feminism which is entirely separatist, which would say, "this domain is purely for women." I don't believe that at all. Simone de Beauvoir feminism domain believe The body is the instrument of our hold on the world. Simone de Beauvoir instruments body world If you are writing something in which you are really involved, you don't even need to think about it any longer. The situation itself demands your total commitment as an individual, just as in your political commitments. Simone de Beauvoir writing commitment thinking What is very troubling is that people who have tried to write literature, even, for example, proletarian writers, seem to write within the norms of the dominant class. Simone de Beauvoir writing class people The misfortune is that although everyone must come to [death], each experiences the adventure in solitude. We never left Maman during those last days... and yet we were profoundly separated from her. Simone de Beauvoir lasts solitude adventure It's so easy to be mistaken about the future. Sometimes there are avant-gardes which believe themselves to be the avant-garde and which later find themselves to be absolutely dated. Simone de Beauvoir avant-garde sometimes believe You can't define the future. And in my opinion, you can't define the avant-garde. Simone de Beauvoir avant-garde opinion Insects were scurrying about in the shade cast by the grass, and the lawn was a huge monotonous forest of thousands of little green blades, all equal, all alike, hiding the world from each other. Anguished, she thought, "I don't want to be just another blade of grass." Simone de Beauvoir green want world On the evenings when my parents held parties, the drawing-room mirrors multiplied to infinity the scintillations of a crystal chandelier. Mama would take her seat at the grand piano to accompany a lady dressed in a cloud of tulle who played the violin and a cousin who performed on a cello. I would crack between my teeth the candied shell of an artificial fruit, and a burst of light would illuminate my palate with a taste of blackcurrant or pineapple: all the colours, all the lights were mine, the gauzy scarves, the diamonds, the laces; I held the whole party in my mouth. Simone de Beauvoir cousin party clouds
