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

Abstraction can provide stumbling blocks for people of strange intelligence.

The most important thing in the world is to hold your soul aloft.

Madame Aubain's servant Felicite was the envy of the ladies of Pont-l'Eveque for half a century.

I go dreaming into the future, where I see nothing, nothing. I have no plans, no idea, no project, and, what is worse, no ambition. Something – the eternal ‘what’s the use?’ – sets its bronze barrier across every avenue that I open up in the realm of hypothesis.

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.

God is only a word dreamed up to explain the world