Quotes About Madame Bovary

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

Lydia Davis

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. Alcoholism is a disease," she said. "Like athlete's foot. Or herpes. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Luker and I have lots of friends who are alcoholics. And speed freaks too." "Well,

Michael McDowell

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

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

David Mitchell

#9. 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

#10. 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

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

Gustave Flaubert

#12. I've never needed government to hold my hand.

Aaron Lewis

#13. I wish they would pass a law where all Democrats and Republicans had to wear NASCAR racing suits, because if you look at the NASCAR drivers, it tells who their sponsors are. And if they do that, we could then become informed voters, because we would know who owns them.

Jesse Ventura

#14. 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

#15. Madame Bovary is myself.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Lydia Davis

#17. '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

#18. I had once thought that Christianity was a soft, wish-fulfillment religion. Now I saw that it was entirely the opposite.

Holly Ordway

#19. 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

#20. The success of any stand-up act comes out of life experience.

Howie Mandel

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. Tyler did not believe in hell. He had decided, long ago, that if God wanted to punish them, there was infinite opportunity right here; hell would be superfluous.
But if there was a hell on earth, Tyler had certainly found it.

Erika Johansen

#24. Because of the love affair between the American public and the stock market, it is possible for entrepreneurs, technological visionaries and inventors of every sort to get financing.

Ron Chernow

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

Gustave Flaubert

#26. 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

#27. The glut of information was dulling awareness, not aiding it.

Jerry Mander

#28. 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

#29. The year 1983 was crazy. People wanted to sell not only their investments ... but also their companies.

Carlos Slim

#30. We should be firing bad teachers.

Malcolm Gladwell

#31. Consider nothing impossible, then treat possiblities as probabilities.

Charles Dickens

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

Salman Rushdie