Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

I like talking to a brick wall- it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me!

My writing has gone to bits - like my character. I am simply a self-conscious nerve in pain.

We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim - objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

It's not hard to get the ideas when they come. They just come... it's painful waiting for them.

M. Zola is determined to show that, if he has not got genius, he can at least be dull.