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

It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.

For every bourgeois, in the heat of youth, if only for a day, for a minute, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of heroic enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of oriental princesses; every rotary carries about inside him the debris of a poet.

You'll always have to deal with bastards, being lied to, deceived, slandered and ridiculed, but that's to be expected and you must thank heaven when you meet the exception.

I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports.... When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them.

There are three thing in the world I love most: the sea, Hamlet, and Don Giovanni.

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.