“At the street corner, a one-storey house built of freestone, but repulsively decrepit and filthy, seemed to command the entrance, like a gaol. And here, indeed, lived La Méchain, like a vigilant proprietess, ever on the watch, exploiting in person her little population of starving tenants.”

“Boredom was at the root of Lazare's unhappiness, an oppressive, unremitting boredom, exuding from everything like the muddy water of a poisoned spring. He was bored with leisure, with work, with himself even more than with others. Meanwhile he blamed his own idleness for it, he ended by being ashamed of it.”

“Men were springing up, a black avenging host was slowly germinating in the furrows, thrusting upward for the harvests of future ages. And very soon their germination would crack the earth asunder.”

“For Zola, as for Huysmans, nature itself is uncanny because it is the domain of the feminine, a domain that is constitutionally defective, lacking, even pathological.”

“Did not one spend the first half of one's days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?”

“She wanted to live, and live fully, and to give life, she who loved life! What was the good of existing, if you couldn't give yourself?”

“There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.”

“I am an artist... I am here to live out loud.”

“Keep well that is the half of wisdom and of happiness. ”

“If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.”

“I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.”