Gustave Flaubert & I would have gotten along swimmingly. And, all the while, I would have been tugging at his sleeve, whispering, “But your life IS beautiful.”

Flaubert wrote to Chevalier,
“My life, which in my dreams is so beautiful, so poetic, so vast, so filled with love, will turn out to be like everyone else’s: monotonous, sensible, stupid. I’ll attend law school, be admitted to the bar and end up as a respectable assistant district attorney in a small provincial town such as Yvetot or Dieppe.. Poor madman, who dreamt of glory, love, laurels, journeys, the Orient.’

THE ART OF TRAVEL, Alain De Botton

For Pete’s sake, the man lived in Rouen!

2 QUOTES:

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”