Quote

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
Lead
Playing
Book
Writing
Men
Knuckles
Like
Attached
Piano
Balls

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

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All you have to do to make something interesting is to look at it long enough.
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Whatever the thing you wish to say, there is but one word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one adjective to qualify it you must seek until you find this noun, this verb, this adjective.
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It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return.
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There are some men whose only mission among others is to act as intermediaries one crosses them like bridges and keeps going.
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She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books.
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Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.
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I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.
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The principal thing in the world is to keep the soul aloft.
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To be simple is no small matter.
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Me and my books in the same apartment, like a gherkin in its vinegar.
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What seems to me the highest and the most difficult achievement of Art is not to make us laugh or cry, or to rouse our lust or our anger, but to do as nature does-that is, fill us with wonderment.
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May I die like a dog rather than hasten the ripening of a sentence by a single second!
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Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.
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It seems to me... that I have always lived! I possess memories that go back to the Pharoahs. I see myself very clearly at different ages of history, practicing different professions... My present personality is the result of my lost [past] personalities.
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After a person dies, there is always something like a feeling of stupefaction, so difficult is it to comprehend this unexpected advent of nothingness and to resign oneself to believing it.
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What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in!
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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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It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts.
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Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
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A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.
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