1
One night I summoned God, if He really existed, to show Himself to me. He didn't, and I never addressed another word to Him. In my heart of hearts I was very glad He didn't exist. I should have hated it if what was going on here below had had to end up in eternity.Simone De Beauvoir
2
Alone: for the first time I understood the terrible significance of that word. Alone without a witness, without anyone to speak to, without refuge. The breath in my body, the blood in my veins, all this hurly-burly in my head existed for nobody.Simone De Beauvoir
3
I was too much of an extremist to be able to live under the eye of God and at the same time say both yes and no to lifeSimone De Beauvoir
4
It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator burdened with all the contradictions in the world.Simone De Beauvoir
5
If I were to share Jaques' existence I would find it hard to hold my own against him, for already I found his nihilism contagious.Simone De Beauvoir
6
Jaques was only what he was; but from a distance he became something more, became everything to me, everything I did not possess. It was to him I owed pains and pleasures whose violence alone saved me from the deserts of boredom in which I found myself bogged down.Simone De Beauvoir
7
I didn't know the first thing about the people around me, but that didn't matter: I was in a new world; and I had the feelings that at last I had put my finger on the secret of freedom.Simone De Beauvoir
8
The facts of religion were convincing only to those who were already convinced.Simone De Beauvoir
9
All those minds that are interested in finding out the truth communicate with each other across the distances of space and time. I, too, was taking part in the effort which humanity makes to know.Simone De Beauvoir
10
I was convinced that I would be, that I was already, one in a million.Simone De Beauvoir
11
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.Simone De Beauvoir
12
The fear of death never left me; I couldn't get used to the thought; I would still sometimes shake and weep with terror. By contrast, the fact of existence here and now sometimes took on a glorious splendour.Simone De Beauvoir
13
I had to call the past to life, and illuminate every corner of the five continents, descend to the centre of the earth and make the circuit of the moon and starsSimone De Beauvoir
14
Why shouldn't a mystical theology be possible? 'I want to touch God or become God, ' I declared in my journal. All through that year I abandoned myself intermittently to these deliriums.Simone De Beauvoir
15
At night I would climb the steps to the Sacre-Coeur, and I would watch Paris, that futile oasis, scintillating in the wilderness of space. I would weep, because it was so beautiful, and because it was so useless.Simone De Beauvoir