Latest Simone de Beauvoir Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• There are so many problems. Women can go to work on these as well without giving up their feminism.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Giving Up, Feminism, Problem

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• I think that The Second Sex will seem an old, dated book, after a while. But nonetheless, a book which will have made its contribution. At least, I hope so.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Sex, Book, Thinking

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• The emancipation of women must be the work of women themselves, independent of the class struggle.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Struggle, Independent, Class

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• In 1949, I believed that social progress, the triumph of the proletariat, socialism would lead to the emancipation of women. But I saw that nothing came of it: first of all, that socialism was not achieved anywhere, and that in certain countries which called themselves socialist, the situation of women was no better than it was in so-called capitalist countries.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Country, Progress, Saws

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• Literature in France seems to be undergoing a crisis now, and nothing comes immediately to mind.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Mind, France, Literature

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• I discovered feminism around 1970-72-precisely the time when feminism began to exist in France. Before that, there was no feminism.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Feminism, France

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• Anais Nin shows an occasional grace in writing, but her work is quite foreign to me, precisely because she wants so much to be feminine and not feminist. And then she is so gaga before so many men. She talks about men I know in France, men who were less than nothing, and she considers them kings, extraordinary people.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Kings, Writing, Men

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• There was a time, in the nineteenth century, for example, when women spoke mostly about the house, children, birth, and so forth, because it was their domain. That's changing a little, now.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Children, House, Littles

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• There has to be a certain relationship between the life and the writing style, and that is really a problem.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Writing, Style, Problem

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• In fact, people seem to be tired of fiction now. There are so many other ways of exploring humanity - by ethnology, psychoanalysis, and so on. It's a little boring to make up stories. So many people think that it's better to be very close to reality and to recount one's life as it is rather than to fictionalize, as they say, that is to transpose, and therefore to cheat.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Tired, Reality, Thinking

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• At the moment of their emancipation, women have a need to write their own histories.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Writing, Needs, Moments

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• I think there is a great tendency toward autobiography among women today. It is perhaps facile - and I say that even though I have written one myself.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Thinking, Today, Tendencies

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• I have never read a really good novel written by a man where women are portrayed as they truly are. They can be portrayed externally very well - Stendhal's Madame de Renal, for example - but only as seen from the outside.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Men, Example, Novel

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• Only a woman can write what it is to feel as a woman, to be a woman.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Writing, Feels

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• A man of the right doesn't write in the same way as a man of the left, you can see that right away, or a woman of the right or a woman of the left.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Writing, Men, Way

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• There are jobs that can be done equally well by men or by women and that finally you can't see a difference. But from the moment that you involve yourself fully in writing a novel, for example, or an essay, then you are involved as a woman, in the same way that you can't deny your nationality - you are French, you are a man, you are a woman... all this passes into the writing.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Jobs, Writing, Men

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• If you are writing something in which you are really involved, you don't even need to think about it any longer. The situation itself demands your total commitment as an individual, just as in your political commitments.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Commitment, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• There are moments when you have to write certain things and you don't have to think of your sex. If you are writing about the population of the thirteenth district in Paris, even if you are writing on the women in the thirteenth district, there's no need to consider your sex.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Sex, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• Men create their own gods and thus have some slight understanding that they are self-fabricated. Women are much more susceptible, because they are completely oppressed by men; they take men at their word and believe in the gods that men have made up. The situation of women, their culture, makes them kneel more often before the gods that have been created by men than men themselves do, who know what they've done. To this extent, women will be more fanatical, whether it is for fascism or for totalitarianism.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Believe, Men, Self

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• Virginia Woolf thought a lot about her own sex when she wrote. In the best sense of the word, her writing is very feminine, and by that I mean that women are supposed to be very sensitive to all the sensations of nature, much more so than men, much more contemplative. It's this quality that marks her best works.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Sex, Writing, Mean

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• Women aren't more easily swayed by fascism than men, but I believe that their situation makes them in effect more slavish than men.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Believe, Men, Fascism

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• Choice springs from the totality of the person. Thus, to study, to analyze what a person is, does not eliminate the idea of freedom.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Spring, Ideas, Choices

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• It's important that you think of your relationship with the world and the way you can express that world and that you not be stopped if it scandalizes or embarrasses; but you must not look for scandal or for the avant-garde as a thing in itself.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Thinking, Important, Avant Garde

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• Picasso never thought of himself as avant-garde. I just find it a bad way to think of yourself.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Thinking, Avant Garde, Way

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

• If you try consciously to be avant-garde, it's a little dangerous, like the present state of modern painting, where dealers try to be avant-garde, and under this pretext, painters take some old scraps and call it avant-garde.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Trying, Avant Garde, Littles

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org