Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins. – Gustave Flaubert
I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key. – Gustave Flaubert
All ones inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry. – Gustave Flaubert
Our destiny often looks like a fruit-tree in winter. Who would think from its pitiable aspect that those rigid boughs, those rough twigs could next spring again be green, bloom, and even bear fruit? Yet we hope it, we know it. – Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Travels, translated from German