One can be the master of what one does, but never of what on... - Gustave Flaubert

"To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost."

"I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within."

"An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere."

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

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