Happy Birthday, Simone.

Photograph of Simone de Beauvoir via Jacket Mechanical

It's very hard to review one's past without cheating a little. My desire to write goes far back. I wrote stories at the age of eight, but lots of children do the same. That doesn't really mean they have a vocation for writing. It may be that in my case the vocation was accentuated because I had lost religious faith; it's also true that when I read books that moved me deeply, such as George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, I wanted terribly much to be, like her, someone whose books would be read, whose books would move readers. 

– Interviewed by Madeleine Gobeil for the Paris Review

Dearest Simone, they do. Happy birthday!