"The public wants work which flatters its illusions."

"Writing is a dog’s life, but the only one worth living."

"He had the vanity to believe men did not like him – while men simply did not know him."

"But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted."

"We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means."

"I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony."

"Sadness is a vice."

"She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep."

"The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree. Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers."

"An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere."

"Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?"

"He had carefully avoided her out of the natural cowardice that characterizes the stronger sex."

"Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling."

"You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything"

"The more you approach infinity, the deeper you penetrate terror"

"What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!"

"Talent is a long patience, and originality an effort of will and intense observation."

"By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream"

"And she felt as though she had been there, on that bench, for an eternity. For an infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space."

"She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books."

"What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love."

"Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

"After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again."

"Love art. Of all lies, it is the least untrue."

"And he beholds the moon; like a rounded fragment of ice filled with motionless light."

"Isn’t ‘not to be bored’ one of the principal goals of life?"

"Maybe happiness too is a metaphor invented on a day of boredom"

"The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeoisie."

"For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat."

"Everything measurable passes, everything that can be counted has an end. Only three things are infinite: the sky in its stars, the sea in its drops of water, and the heart in its tears."

"Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough."

"Years passed; and he endured the idleness of his intelligence and the inertia of his heart."

"Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance."

"Thought is the greatest of pleasures —pleasure itself is only imagination—have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams?"

"When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women"

"She did not believe that things could remain the same in different places, and since the portion of her life that lay behind her had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better."

"Read in order to live."

"In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up."

"Love, to her, was something hat comes suddenly, like a blinding flash of lightening - a heaven-sent storm hurled into life, uprooting it, sweeping every will before it like a leaf, engulfing all feelings."

"One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table."

"She was as sated with him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage."

"(Egypt) is a great place for contrasts: splendid things gleam in the dust."

"I have always tried to live in an ivory tower, but a tide of shit is beating at its walls, threatening to undermine it."

"For her, life was as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north, and ennui, like a spider, was silently spinning its shadowy web in every cranny of her heart."

"It is an excellent habit to look at things as so many symbols."

"God is in the details."

"Emma was no asleep, she was pretending to be asleep; and, while he was dozing off at her side, she lay awake, dreaming other dreams."

"And the more he was irritated by her basic personality, the more he was drawn to her by a harsh, bestial sensuality, illusions of a moment, which ended in hate."

"It was the fault of destiny!"

"On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters."