Every wave is a water sprite who swims in the current, each current is a path which snakes towards my palace, and my palace is fluidly built at the bottom of the lake, in the triangle of earth, fire and water.
Emile ZolaI am spending delightful afternoons in my garden, watching everything living around me. As I grow older, I feel everything departing, and I love everything with more passion.
Emile ZolaWhen lovers kiss on the cheeks, it is because they are searching, feeling for one another's lips. Lovers are made by a kiss.
Emile ZolaOh, that's typical of you modern young men; you've nibbled at science and it's made you ill, because you've not been able to satisfy that old craving for the absolute that you absorbed in your nurseries. You'd like science to give you all the answers at one go, whereas we're only just beginning to understand it, and it'll probably never be anything but an eternal quest. And so you repudiate science, you fall back on religion, and religion won't have you any more. Then you relapse into pessimism...Yes, it's the disease of our age, of the end of the century: you're all inverted Werthers.
Emile Zola