The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each other; you go to a lot of… - Gustave Flaubert

I'm no more modern than ancient, no more French than Chinese, and the idea of a native country, that is to say, the imperative to live on one bit of ground marked red or blue on the map and to hate the other bits in green or black, has always seemed to me narrow-minded, blinkered and profoundly stupid. I am a soul brother to everything that lives, to the giraffe and to the crocodile as much as to man.

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost. (13 August 1846)

I go dreaming into the future, where I see nothing, nothing. I have no plans, no idea, no project, and, what is worse, no ambition. Something – the eternal ‘what’s the use?’ – sets its bronze barrier across every avenue that I open up in the realm of hypothesis.