Simone de Beauvoir Book Quotations

A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male.

Every time I start on a new book, I am a beginner again. I doubt myself, I grow discouraged, all the work accomplished in the past is as though it never was, my first drafts are so shapeless that it seems impossible to go on with the attempt at all, right up until the moment - always imperceptible, there, too, there is a break - when it is has become impossible not to finish it.

Few books are more thrilling than certain confessions, but they must be honest, and the author must have something to confess.

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[...].