" unlucky lover’s soul; while he is walking around Rome, a woman emerges at every turn of the page; by the regrets, desires, sadnesses, and joys women awakened in him, he came to know the nature of his own heart; it is women he wants as judges: he frequents their salons, he wants to shine; he owes them his greatest joys, his greatest pain, they were his main occupation; he prefers their love to any friendship, their friendship to that of men; women inspire his books, female figures populate them; he writes in great part for them. “I might be lucky enough to be read in 1900 by the souls I love, the Mme Rolands, the Mélanie Guilberts …” They were the very substance of his life. Where did this privilege come from? This tender friend of women—and precisely "

― Simone de Beauvoir , The Second Sex