She remembered the heroines of novels she had read, and the lyrical legion of those adulterous women began to sing in her memory with sisterly voices that enchanted her. Now she saw herself as one of those amoureuses whom she had so envied: she was becoming, in reality, one of that gallery of fictional figures; the long dream of her youth was coming true.

Noble characters and pure affections and happy scenes are very comforting things. They're a refuge from life's disillusionments.

I know nothing more noble than the contemplation of the world.

Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.

What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love.

One's existence should be in two parts: one should live like a bourgeois and think like a demigod.

Art is nothing without form.