Quotes from The Woman Destroyed

“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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Woman Destroyed

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

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

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

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

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

“It must feel wonderfully strange when, like Manette, one stands there, the only witness to a vanished world.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from 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, quote from The Woman Destroyed

“They don't like being seen through: as for me I'm straight I don't join their act I tear masks off.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from The Woman Destroyed

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Popular quotes

“Princess, stop walking and just talk to me.” “Why? So you can let me know again how much of a slut you think I am?” “I don’t,” he let out a half-growl, half-sigh, “I don’t think you’re a slut. You just caught me on a bad day.” “Let me guess Chase, you hurt me because you were just so damn mad … am I right?” I threw his line from a month ago back in his face and he paled. His hand came up and brushed my hair back, holding it away from my face as he stared into my eyes, “This is why I told you I would never be good enough for you, all I do is hurt you Princess.” “This isn’t about you being, or not being good enough for me. I just want to be your friend, and you’re making that impossible.” Friend, he mouthed and scratched his head before grabbing a fistful of hair, “Okay, fine, we’re friends. But I need you to stop approaching me around my house and at school.” “What? Then that puts us exactly where we’ve been the last three weeks, that doesn’t change anything.” “It needs to be that way.” He released both his hair and mine at the same time and turned away for a second before facing me again, “Sundays are the only day I get you. Those are the only days when you’re here with me.” I opened my mouth but he stopped me, “No, I know you’re not here for me … but you’re here. And he’s not.” He bent his knees so we were eye to eye, “I need these days with you Harper. But every other day, you’re his and it’s not a good idea for us to be around each other then. So stay away. Please.” “Chase …” “If you think acting like you don’t exist isn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done, you’re wrong. I hate not talking to you, I hate not bickering like we’re an old married couple and I hate not spending every day right next to you. But this is how it has to be, Brandon hates me, and Princess trust me when I say he has every reason to. So if after everything I’ve done to you, you’ll still even consider being my friend, then it has to be Sundays only.” “Brandon won’t care if we’re friends.” Okay I wasn’t entirely sure that was true. He smiled and shook his head, “I know you’re not that naïve. Now go have lunch with Mom and Bree, then get your ass back here so I can have my few stolen hours with you.” I walked toward the entryway but stopped after a few feet, “Chase?” “Yeah Princess?” Looking over my shoulder, I held his gaze, “Will you please stop hurting me … in every way?” Chase closed the distance and pulled me into a tight hug, “Go eat sweetheart.” That”
― Molly McAdams, quote from Taking Chances

“After supper was over and the toasts had been drunk, the boy Pablo was called in to play for the company while the gentlemen smoked. . . there was softness and languor in the wire strings--but there was also a kind of madness; the recklessness, the call of wild countries which all these men had felt or followed in one way or another. Through clouds of cigar smoke, the scout and the soldiers, the Mexican rancheros and the priests, sat silently watching the bent head and crouching shoulders of the banjo player, and his seesawing yellow hand, which sometimes lost all form and became a mere whirl of matter in motion, like a patch of sand-storm.”
― Willa Cather, quote from Death Comes for the Archbishop

“Sometimes the truth has difficulty breaching the city walls of our beliefs. A lie, dressed in the correct livery, passes through more easily.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina

“But probably that's the way of the world - when we have finally learned something we're too old to apply it - and so it goes, wave after wave, generation after generation. No one learns anything at all from anyone else.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, quote from The Black Obelisk

“Don't ever ask me again if I hate living anywhere with you and Jasmina. This Rock reminds me of the boy I was and being with you in the palace reminds me of the man I want to be.'

'Not just any man,' she whispered. 'A King. Mine.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from Froi of the Exiles

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