Inseparable

by Simone de Beauvoir

was taught that my good behavior and piousness would determine whether God saved France:

I suddenly had the impression that nothing had ever happened to me at all.

I was a little jealous, perhaps envious, and I felt the kind of fear aroused by the unknown.

a man as superior as Papa necessarily had a more complicated relationship with God than women or little girls did.

How many years? How many evenings? Is living nothing more than that: killing one day after the other? Would I be this bored until I died?

often congratulated myself, egotistically, that the Bolsheviks and life’s malevolence had ruined my father: I was obliged to work, the problems that tormented Andrée didn’t concern me.

“I like roses; they are ceremonial flowers that die without fading, in a curtsy.”