Quotes from book

Flaubert's Parrot

“The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.”

“It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.”

“Pride makes us long for a solution to things – a solution, a purpose, a final cause; but the better telescopes become, the more stars appear.”

“Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all.”

“He didn’t really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself.”

“To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness - though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.”

“Remember the botched brothel-visit in L’Education sentimentale and remember its lesson. Do not participate: happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.”

“Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.”

“Irony - The modern mode: either the devil’s mark or the snorkel of sanity.”

“Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.”

“His air of failure had nothing desperate about it; rather, it seemed to stem from an unresented realisation that he was not cut out for success, and his duty was therefore to ensure only that he failed in the correct and acceptable fashion.”

“A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.”

“The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.”

“If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that.”

“Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance.”