I am finding it very hard to get my novel started. I suffer from stylistic abscesses; and sentences keep itching without coming to a head.

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 — for her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions, not scenery.

The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.

Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions.

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

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

The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each other; you go a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or emptiness!