The Woman Destroyed Quotes

“When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...].”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“My life was hurrying, racing tragically toward its end. And yet at the same time it was dripping so slowly, so very slowly now, hour by hour, minute by minute. One always has to wait until the sugar melts, the memory dies, the wound scars over, the sun sets, the unhappiness lifts and fades away.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“There was once a man who lost his shadow. I forget what happened to him, but it was dreadful. As for me, I've lost my own image. I did not look at it often; but it was there, in the background, just as Maurice had drawn it for me. A straightforward, genuine, "authentic" woman, with out mean-mindedness, uncompromising, but at the same time understanding, indulgent, sensitive, deeply feeling, intensely aware of things and of people, passionately devoted to those she loved and creating happiness for them. A fine life, serene, full, "harmonious." It is dark: I cannot see myself anymore. And what do the others see? Maybe something hideous.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“It is so tiring to hate someone you love.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“Some things I loved have vanished. A great many others have been given to me”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“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, The Woman Destroyed

“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, The Woman Destroyed

“Youth and what the Italians so prettily call stamina. The vigor, the fire, that enables you to love and create. When you've lost that, you've lost everything.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“There is not a single line in this diary that does not call for a correction or a denial...Yes: throughout these pages I meant what I was writing and I meant the opposite; reading them again I feel completely lost...I was lying to myself. How I lied to myself!”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“You have never had any confidence in him. And if he has no confidence in himself it is because he sees himself through your eyes.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“My worst mistake has been not grasping that time goes by. It was going by and there I was, set in the attitude of the ideal wife of an ideal husband. Instead of bringing our sexual relationship to life again I brooded happily over memories of our former nights together.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“It is dreadful to think that behind me my own past is no longer anything but shifting darkness.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“--There you are. The sight of the changing world is miraculous and heartbreaking, both at the same time.
--But so it is for me too. The heartbreaking side of growing old is not in the things around one but in oneself.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“The way I approached a question, my habit of mind, the way I looked at things, what I took for granted - all this was myself and it did not seem to me that I could alter it.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“There was still a question in her eyes-- one that she did not like to put into words.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“A couple who go on living together merely because that was how they began, without any other reason: was that what we were turning into?”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“One always has to wait until the sugar melts, the memory dies, the wound scars over, the sun sets, the unhappiness lifts and fades away.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“If I were the earth it would disgust me, all this vermin on my back, I’d shake it off.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“The adventure is which I have shared so passionately is not over--this adventure with its doubt, failure, the dreariness of no progress, then a glimpse of light, a hope, a hypothesis confirmed; and then after weeks and months of anxious perseverance, the intoxication of success.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“All around me the world lies like an immense hypothesis that I no longer verify.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“If you point out that they’re walking in shit they scream it’s you that have dirty feet.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“The world brings itself into being before my eyes in an everlasting present: I grow used to its different aspects so quickly that it does not seem to me to change.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“My overflowing leisure handed me the world and at the same time prevented me from seeing it. Just as the sun, filtering through the closed venetian blinds on a hot afternoon, makes the whole magnificence of summer blaze in my mind; whereas if I face its direct harsh glare it blinds me.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“Has my watch stopped? No. But its hands do not seem to be going around. Don't look at them. Think of something else - anything else: think of yesterday, a calm, ordinary, easy-flowing day, in spite of the nervous tension of waiting.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“The monologue is her form of revenge. FLAUBERT”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“The people of former times [...] they're dead that's the only thing they have over the living but in their own day they were just as sickening. Picturesqueness: I don't fall for that not for one minute. Stinking filthy dirty washing cabbage-stalks what a pretentious fool you have to be to go into such ecstasies over that! And it's the same thing everywhere all the time whether they're stuffing themselves with chips paella or pizza it's the same crew a filthy crew the rich who trample over you the poor who hate you for your money the old who dodder the young who sneer the men who show off the women who open their legs. I'd rather stay at home reading a thriller although they've become so dreary nowadays. The telly too what a clapped-out set of fools! I was made for another planet altogether I mistook the way.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“As far as I am concerned sexuality no longer exists. I used to call this indifference serenity: all at once I have come to see it in another light—it is a mutilation; it is the loss of a sense. The lack of it makes me blind to the needs, the pains, and the joys of those who do possess it.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“And it’s the same thing everywhere all the time whether they’re stuffing themselves with chips paella or pizza it’s the same crew a filthy crew the rich who trample over you the poor who hate you for your money the old who dodder the young who sneer the men who show off the women who open their legs. I’d rather stay at home reading a thriller although they’ve become so dreary nowadays. The TV too what a clapped-out set of fools! I was made for another planet altogether I mistook the way.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed