Emma Bovary Quotes

“I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader's mind. No matter how many times we reopen 'King Lear,' never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion with all three daughters and their lapdogs. Never will Emma rally, revived by the sympathetic salts in Flaubert's father's timely tear. Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Every time Leon had to tell her everything that he had done since their last meeting. She asked him for some verses - some verses for herself, a "love poem" in honour of her. But he never succeeded in getting a rhyme for the second verse; and at last ended by copying for her a sonnet in a "Keepsake". This was less from vanity than from the one desire of pleasing her. He did not question her ideas; he accepted all her tastes; he was rather becoming her mistress than she his. She had tender words and kisses that thrilled his soul. Where could she have learned this corruption almost incorporeal in the strength of its profundity and dissimulation?”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Había un no sé qué de vertiginoso que Emma sentía llegar hasta sí, como una emanación de aquellas vidas amontonadas, y su corazón se henchía profundamente al percibirlo. Era como si las ciento veinte mil almas que allí palpitaban le estuvieran enviando al unísono el vaho de aquellas pasiones que ella les atribuía. Su amor ensanchaba a la vista de aquel espacio y se llenaba con el rumoreo de confusos murmullos que subían hasta ella. Proyectaba su amor hacia fuera, hacia las plazas, los paseos y las calles, y la antigua villa normanda le antojaba una capital desmesurada, una especie de Babilonia por cuyas puertas estaba entrando. Se apoyaba con las dos manos en el borde de la ventanilla y se inclinaba hacia afuera para aspirar la brisa, mientras los tres caballos seguían su galope.”
― Flaubert Gustave, Madame Bovary

“So don't be too fast to attribute yourself with miraculous sexual powers, The Christ of Love. Emma and I created you out of nothing, or very little, and in all fairness, You owe us everything. While you flounder in your daily life we have built you up as a truly powerful icon of erotic integrity.”
― Chris Kraus, I Love Dick