Simone de Beauvoir arriving in Israel with Jean-Paul Sartre, 1967. Photo: Milner Moshe, via Wikimedia Commons.

INTERVIEWER

Some critics and readers have felt that you spoke about old age in an unpleasant way.

DE BEAUVOIR

A lot of people didn’t like what I said because they want to believe that all periods of life are delightful, that children are innocent, that all newlyweds are happy, that all old people are serene. I’ve rebelled against such notions all my life, and there’s no doubt about the fact that the moment, which for me is not old age but the beginning of old age, represents—even if one has all the resources one wants, affection, work to be done—represents a change in one’s existence, a change that is manifested by the loss of a great number of things. If one isn’t sorry to lose them it’s because one didn’t love them. I think that people who glorify old age or death too readily are people who really don’t love life. Of course, in present-day France you have to say that everything’s fine, that everything’s lovely, including death.

—Simone de Beauvoir, the Art of Fiction No. 35