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Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.

Gustave Flaubert

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Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Book
Writing
Men
Knuckles
Like
Attached
Piano
Balls
Lead
Playing

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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.
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Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.
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All you have to do to make something interesting is to look at it long enough.
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You can't find the soul with a scalpel.
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Reveal art conceal the artist.
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For some men, the stronger their desire, the more difficult it is for them to act.
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On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.
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Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.
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Me and my books in the same apartment, like a gherkin in its vinegar.
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The most important quality of art and its aim is illusion emotion, which is often obtained by certain sacrifices of poetic detail, is something else entirely and of an inferior order.
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Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
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Stupidity is something unshakable nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.
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Concern for morality makes every work of the imagination false and stupid.
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I invite all brats to throw their cookies at the baker's head if they're not sweet, winos to chuck their wine if it's bad, the dying to shuck their souls when they croak, and men to throw their existence in God's face when it's bitter
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To be simple is no small matter.
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Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.
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Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. I've never sought it (though I desire it) and seek it less and less.
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I have patience in all things - as far as the antechamber.
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One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.
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Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word. They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty, duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.
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