Bovary Quotes

#1. Doesn't it seem to you," asked Madame Bovary, "that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?

Gustave Flaubert

#2. Madame Bovary and a flying carpet, they are both untrue in the same way. Somebody made them up.

Salman Rushdie

#3. There aren't very many good models of feminine rage - and the ones that we remember are ones where women take that anger internally and implode themselves in a real way, like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary.

Lauren Groff

#4. The time to read Madame Bovary is when your romantic hopes and desires have crashed, and you will believe that your future relationships will have disappointing - even devastating - consequences.

John Irving

#5. The power of 'Madame Bovary' stems from Flaubert's determination to render each object of his scrutiny exactly as it looks, or sounds or smells or feels or tastes.

Kathryn Harrison

#6. His thoughts go to Emma Bovary strutting before the mirror after her first big afternoon. I have a lover! I have a lover! sings Emma to herself. Well, let poor Bev Shaw go home and do some singing too. And let him stop calling her poor Bev Shaw. If she is poor, he is bankrupt.

Anonymous

#7. As Baudelaire said it so beautifully, Emma Bovary is an androgynous character. She cannot be reduced to a gender or a sociological type. She represents something bigger than herself. That was the genius of Flaubert: the ability to combine the general and the particular.

Sophie Barthes

#8. You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their credit cards. Emma Bovary would have maxed hers out. No question. Mr. Scrooge would not have. He would have snipped his up.

Margaret Atwood

#9. I don't want my novel to be like Madame Bovary, finely crafted with the life edited out of it. I want my novel to be like a friend telling me a story
so we go off on thoughts; that's the way it is.

Tama Janowitz

#10. Madame Bovary is timeless. It is not just about the female condition in France in the 1840s. It's not a simple cautionary tale. Emma is more than a character; she gives us an insight into human nature. With Emma, we are diving into the complexities of Flaubert's psyche.

Sophie Barthes

#11. 'Madame Bovary' advanced slowly, as slowly as it would have to have, given an author who held himself accountable to each word, that it be the right word, of which there could be only one.

Kathryn Harrison

#12. Madame Bovary is myself.

Gustave Flaubert

#13. I wrote the first draft of 'Madame Bovary' without studying the previous translations, although I gathered them and took the occasional peek.

Lydia Davis

#14. Flaubert's famous sentence, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" ("Madame Bovary, she is me"), in reality means, " Madame Bovary, c'est nous" ("Madame Bovary, she is us"), in our modern incapacity to live a "good-enough" life.

Sophie Barthes

#15. One must not give way altogether, and, because others have died, want to die too. You must pull yourself together, Monsieur Bovary. It will pass away.

Anonymous

#16. I always wanted to be Jo in 'Little Women.' She's a bit reckless and feckless, always getting into trouble like me. But I'm probably more like Madame Bovary.

Sue Townsend

#17. An interviewer asked me what book I thought best represented the modern American woman. All I could think of to answer was: Madame Bovary.

Joseph McCarthy

#18. Madame Bovary is the sexiest book imaginable. The woman's virtually a nyphomaniac but you won't find a vulgar word in the entire thing.

Noel Coward

#19. But you have read Madame Bovary?' (I'd never heard of her books.) 'No.

David Mitchell

#20. Unicorns, dragons, witches may be creatures conjured up in dreams, but on the page their needs, joys, anguishes, and redemptions should be just as true as those of Madame Bovary or Martin Chuzzlewit.

Alberto Manguel

#21. I'm astounded by people who take eighteen years to write something. That's how long it took that guy to write Madame Bovary, and was that ever on the best-seller list?

Sylvester Stallone

#22. I first read 'Madame Bovary' in my teens or early twenties.

Lydia Davis

#23. I wrote a book on grace, and grace is a free gift, but to receive the gift you have to have your hands open. And a lot of people don't have their hands open, there's something they're grasping because there's a lot of things to grasp in a prosperous country.

Philip Yancey

#24. People say that things like this happen in slow motion, as though you suddenly become an astronaut in the antigravity chamber of your own life. This wasn't true for me. Things were speeding up instead, and I did my best to slow them down in my mind.

Edwidge Danticat

#25. She loved the sea only for its storms, and greenery only when it was scattered among ruins.

Gustave Flaubert

#26. If psychoanalysis clarifies some facts of sexuality, it is not by aiming at them in their own reality, not in biological experience.

Jacques Lacan

#27. The smooth folds of her dress concealed a tumultuous heart, and her modest lips told nothing of her torment. She was in love.

Gustave Flaubert

#28. At the end of your life, do you give a concession speech?

Jon Stewart

#29. As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from one end of the keyboard to the other without a stop.

Gustave Flaubert

#30. We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers.

Gustave Flaubert

#31. Charles went to kiss her shoulder.
-Leave me alone! she said, you're creasing my dress.

Gustave Flaubert

#32. Barry Manilow was very special for me. We've had many collaborations since then and all have been equally rewarding and musical. I've learned so much from him. I like being a student around him; observing him in his environment.

Dave Koz