Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing bu... - Gustave Flaubert

"One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness."

"When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women"

"Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live."

"Writing is a dog’s life, but the only one worth living."

"There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it"