Gustave Flaubert (Narrator)

"Her infidelity was less about passion than about escape"

"She had confused the flattery of lovers with the love of a husband"

"Her disasters were of her own making, yet she felt victimized by them"

"Reality had disappointed her so thoroughly that fantasy became her only refuge"

"She had sought infinity in the finite world"

"Her restlessness was the price of her sensitivity"

"She believed in grand passions and impossible dreams"

"Routine was her slow poison"

"She had read too many novels to be content with her own life"

"Her beauty had promised her more than life could deliver"

"She mistook the excitement of deception for the reality of love"

"The world outside her desires seemed small and contemptible"

"She had wanted to transcend her circumstances but lacked the strength to do so"

"Her imagination had always been her truest lover"

"She could not live in the world as it was, only as she dreamed it"

"Constancy was a virtue unknown to her nature"

"She believed that somewhere existence held perfect happiness"

"Her defeats were her own, yet she never felt responsible for them"

"She had wanted to be extraordinary but was condemned to be ordinary"

"Love for her was a theater in which she played the tragic heroine"

"She sought in passion what she could not find in marriage"

"Her debts were the visible manifestation of her invisible despair"

"She had confused novels with life and paid the price"

"Her tragedy was not in her circumstances but in her refusal to accept them"

"She believed happiness was always one affair away"

"The gap between her dreams and reality grew wider each day"

"She had wanted everything and deserved nothing"

"Her passion was a flame that consumed everything it touched"

"She saw her life as a series of betrayals by the world"

"Her desperation took the form of recklessness"