We used to talk about all kinds of things, but especially about a subject which interested me above all others: myself. Whenever other people made attempts to analyse me, they did so from the standpoint of their own little worlds, and this used to exasperate me. But Sartre always tried to see me as part of my own scheme of things, to understand me in the light of my own set of values and attitudes. He listened without enthusiasm to what I told him about Jacques; for a woman who had been brought up as I had been, it would perhaps be difficult to avoid marriage: but he hadn’t a good word to say for it. Whatever happened, I would have to try to preserve what was best in me: my love of personal freedom, my passion for life, my curiosity, my determination to be a writer. Not only did he give me encouragement but he also intended to give me active help in achieving this ambition. Two years older than myself – two years which he had turned to good account – and having got off to a better start much earlier than I had, he had a deeper and wider knowledge of everything. But what he himself recognized as a true superiority over me, and one which was immediately obvious to myself, was the calm and yet almost frenzied passion with which he was preparing for the books he was going to write. In the past I had always despised children who played croquet or worked with less intensity than I did: here was someone in whose eyes my frantic determination seemed weak and timid. And indeed when I compared myself with him, how lukewarm my feverish obsessions appeared! I had thought I was an exceptional person because I couldn’t imagine living and not writing: but he only lived in order to write.