There comes a point at which you stop writing and think all the more

Madame Aubain's servant Felicite was the envy of the ladies of Pont-l'Eveque for half a century.

Concern for morality makes every work of the imagination false and stupid.

The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree. Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.

The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn’t come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words “bliss,” “passion,” and “rapture” - words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books.

My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.