I am alone on this road strewn with bones and bordered by ruins! Angels have their brothers, and demons have their infernal companions. Yet I have but the sound of my scythe when it harvests, my whistling arrows, my galloping horse. Always the sound of the same wave eating away at the world
Gustave FlaubertBut the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt comes off in our hands.
Gustave FlaubertIt is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts.
Gustave FlaubertAfter the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.
Gustave FlaubertThere are in me, in literary terms, two distinct characters: one who is taken with roaring, with lyricism, with soaring aloft, with all the sonorities of phrase and summits of thought; and the other who digs and scratches for truth all he can, who is as interested in the little facts as the big ones, who would like to make you feel materially the things he reproduces.
Gustave Flaubert