Gustave Flaubert (Narrator)

"The past whispers what the present refuses to hear."

"She was a masterpiece of her own destruction."

"The soul withers in towns where nothing ever changes."

"Love is not two souls becoming one; it is two prisons merging."

"She was always inventing some pretext to leave the house."

"She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris."

"Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with thunder and lightning."

"She confused in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart."

"She was sick of it all; she felt as though she were dying."

"The world, after all, is but a collection of follies."

"Words are such unsatisfactory things."

"She had read too many novels."

"Everything immediately around her—the tedious country, the mediocre bourgeois, the mediocrity of existence—seemed to her an exception, an accident."

"She would have preferred anything to this dullness of existence."

"Her heart was full of rebellious longings."

"She believed in love as she believed in God—without having seen either."

"She was lost in the intoxication of her dreams."

"Money cannot buy everything."

"The past had left her with nothing but regrets."

"She dreamed of happiness as of a distant country."

"Art alone was insufficient."

"Her sorrows were real; her joys were invented."

"He loved her, but she did not love him back."

"She wanted to escape, to flee, to die."

"Her existence had become unbearable."

"What is passion but a collection of delusions?"

"She sought in vain for happiness in the arms of men."

"Boredom is the worst of all afflictions."

"She had loved novels more than life itself."

"Her dreams were her only consolation."