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

“Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.”

“It seemed to her that certain parts of the world must produce happiness as they produced peculiar plants which will flourish nowhere else.”

“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.”

“In his earliest youth, he had drawn inspiration from really bad authors, as you may have seen from his style; as he grew older, he lost his taste for them, but the excellent authors just didn’t fill him with the same enthusiasm”

“To return to antiquity [in literature]: that has been done. To return to the Middle Ages: that too has been done. Remains the present day. But the ground is shaky: so where can you set the foundations? An answer to this question must be found if one is to produce anything vital and hence lasting. All this disturbs me so much that I no longer like to be spoken to about it.”

“Everyone, he thought, must have adored her; all men assuredly must have coveted her. She seemed but the more beautiful to him for this; he was seized with a lasting, furious desire for her, that inflamed his despair, and that was boudless, because it was now unrealisable.To please her, as if she were still living, he adopted her predilections, her ideas; he bought patent leather boots and took to wearing white cravats. He put cosmetics on his moustache, and, like her, signed notes of hand. She corrupted him from beyond the grave.”