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"The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and its ominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him...In any case, the more traits and proportions of a woman seem contrived, the more she delighted the heart of man because she seemed to escape the metamorphosis of natural things. The result is this strange paradox that by desiring to grasp nature, but transfigured, in woman, man destines her to artifice."
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"I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime."
"All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives - all that was over."
"I think it's very important for writers and artists generally to be witnesses to the world, and to be transparent. To let other people speak... to travel... to experience the world. And memorialize it."
"You would be much amused with the animals round the ranch."
"In fact it was altogether an odd dog, of uncertain breed, or breeds. It was large and black, but its hair was tufty, its body scrawny and clumsy, and its manner edgy, anxious, verging on the completely neurotic. Whenever it came to a halt for a moment or so, the business of starting up again often seemed to cause it trouble, as if it had difficulty in remembering where it had left each of its legs."
"The bowl is warmer than the soup."
"Taking a deep breath, I shake my head and find Judge staring at me. "Reason number 106 why dogs are smarter than humans," I say. "Once you leave the litter, you sever contact with your mothers."
"Arcadio had seen her many times working in her parents' small food store but he had never taken a good look at her because she had that rare virtue of never existing completely except at the opportune moment."
"Vivi muito tempo no mundo das pessoas grandes. Vi-as de bem perto. Não fiquei com muito melhor opinião delas."
Explore more quotes by Simone de Beauvoir
"In a way, literature is true than life,' he said to himself. 'On paper, you say exactly and completely what you feel. How easy it is to break things off on paper! You hate, you shout, you kill, you commit suicide; you carry things to the very end. And that's why it's false. But it's damned satisfying. In life, you're constantly denying yourself, and others are always contradicting you. On paper, I make time stand still and I impose my convictions on the whole world; they become the only reality."
"Suddenly I was struck motionless: I was living through the first chapter of a novel in which I was the heroine; she was still almost a child, but we, too, were growing up."
"I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me."
"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."
"But this element of failure is a very condition of his life; one can never dream of eliminating it without immediately dreaming of death. This does not mean that one should consent to failure, but rather one must consent to struggle against it without respite."
"One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion."
"To re-establish man at the heart of his destiny is, they claim, to repudiate all ethics. However, far from God's absence authorizing all license, the contrary is the case, because man is abandoned on the earth, because his acts are definitive, absolute engagements. He bears the responsibility for a world which is not the work of a strange power, but of himself, where his defeats are inscribed, & his victories as well."
"The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels."
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