"Do not imagine you can exorcise what oppresses you in life by giving vent to it in art."

"For a long time now my heart has had its shutters closed, its steps deserted, formerly a tumultuous hotel, but now empty and echoing like a great empty tomb."

"Abstraction can provide stumbling blocks for people of strange intelligence."

"My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real."

"On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters."

"It was the fault of destiny!"

"And the more he was irritated by her basic personality, the more he was drawn to her by a harsh, bestial sensuality, illusions of a moment, which ended in hate."

"Emma was no asleep, she was pretending to be asleep; and, while he was dozing off at her side, she lay awake, dreaming other dreams."

"God is in the details."

"It is an excellent habit to look at things as so many symbols."

"For her, life was as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north, and ennui, like a spider, was silently spinning its shadowy web in every cranny of her heart."

"I have always tried to live in an ivory tower, but a tide of shit is beating at its walls, threatening to undermine it."

"(Egypt) is a great place for contrasts: splendid things gleam in the dust."

"She was as sated with him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage."

"One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table."

"Love, to her, was something hat comes suddenly, like a blinding flash of lightening - a heaven-sent storm hurled into life, uprooting it, sweeping every will before it like a leaf, engulfing all feelings."

"In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up."

"Read in order to live."

"She did not believe that things could remain the same in different places, and since the portion of her life that lay behind her had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better."

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

"Thought is the greatest of pleasures —pleasure itself is only imagination—have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams?"

"Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling."

"He had carefully avoided her out of the natural cowardice that characterizes the stronger sex."

"Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?"