I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words my people uttered, even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned eyes.

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

May I die like a dog rather than hasten the ripening of a sentence by a single second!

As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from one end of the keyboard to the other without a stop.

Iced champagne was served, and the feel of the cold wine in her mouth gave Emma a shiver that ran over her from head to toe.

Be orderly and disciplined in daily life, like a good bourgeois, so that I might be wild and violent in my art.