246 Quotes by Émile Zola

From the moment I start a new novel, life’s just one endless torture. The first few chapters may go fairly well and I may feel there’s still a chance to prove my worth, but that feeling soon disappears and every day I feel less and less satisfied.

I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don’t care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.

Don’t go looking at me like that because you’ll wear your eyes out.

The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one’s toes on the gravestones.

Did not one spend the first half of one’s days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?

Yes! live life with every fibre of one’s being, surrender oneself to it, with no thoughts of rebellion, without deluding oneself that one can improve it and render it painless.

Blow the candle out, I don’t need to see what my thoughts look like.

Why then should money be blamed for all the dirt and crimes it causes? For is love less filthy – love which creates life?

When lovers kiss on the cheeks, it is because they are searching, feeling for one another’s lips. Lovers are made by a kiss.