65
" I am a psychological and historical structure. Along with existence, I received a way of existing, or a style. All of my actions and thoughts are related to this structure, and even a philosopher’s thought is merely a way of making explicit his hold upon the world, which is all he is. And yet, I am free, not in spite of or beneath these motivations, but rather by their means. For that meaningful life, that particular signification of nature and history that I am, does not restrict my access to the world; it is rather my means of communication with it. "
― Sarah Bakewell , At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
70
" In asking these two questions, most (not all) of the existentialists drew on their own life experience. But this experience was itself structured around philosophy. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty summed up this relationship, ‘Life becomes ideas and the ideas return to life.’ This connection became especially apparent when they talked ideas through with one another, which they did all the time. As Merleau-Ponty also wrote: A discussion is not an exchange or a confrontation of ideas, as if each formed his own, showed them to the others, looked at theirs, and returned to correct them with his own … Whether he speaks up or hardly whispers, each one speaks with all that he is, with his ‘ideas’, but also with his obsessions, his secret history. "
― Sarah Bakewell , At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
80
" For Sartre and Beauvoir, their open relationship was more than a personal arrangement; it was a philosophical choice. They wanted to live their theory of freedom. The bourgeois model of marriage had no appeal for them, with its strict gender roles, its hushed-up infidelities, and its dedication to the accumulation of property and children. They had no children, they owned little, and they never even lived together, although they put their relationship before all others and met almost every day to work side by side. "
― Sarah Bakewell , At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails