Simone de Beauvoir on life

A life is set within a given space of time; it has a beginning and and an end; it evolves in given places, always retaining the same roots and spinning itself an unchangeable past whose opening towards the future is limited. It is impossible to grasp and define a life as one can grasp and define a thing, since a life is 'an unsummed whole', as Satre puts it, a demoralized totality, and therefore it has no being. But one can ask certain questions about it. How is a life formed? How much of it is made up by circumstances, how much by necessity, how much by chance, and how much by the subject's own options and his personal initiatives?