She loved the sea for its storms alone, cared for vegetation only when it grew here and there among ruins. She had to extract a kind of personal advantage from things and she rejected as useless everything that promised no immediate gratification โ for her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions, not scenery.
Gustave FlaubertThe only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.
Gustave FlaubertEach dream finds at last its form; there is a drink for every thirst, and love for every heart. And there is no better way to spend your life than in the unceasing preoccupation of an idea--of an ideal.
Gustave FlaubertIโm dazzled by your facility. In ten days youโll have written six stories! I donโt understand itโฆ Iโm like one of those old aqueducts: thereโs so much rubbish cogging up the banks of my thought that it flows slowly, and only spills from the end of my pen drop by drop.
Gustave Flaubert