Simone de Beauvoir

Why one man rather than another? It was odd. You find yourself involved with a fellow for life just because he was the one that you met when you were nineteen.

The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels.

This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate.

In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.

The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them.

To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.