Huysmans takes the old trope of moon-as-woman and replaces its romantic connotations with decadent ones: the moon here is woman as clamorous lunatic, as convulsive epileptic.

For Zola, as for Huysmans, nature itself is uncanny because it is the domain of the feminine, a domain that is constitutionally defective, lacking, even pathological.

The soldier in the portrait had been a respected and admired officer...The man he had become was fighting a different battle now. He had his demons, just as she had her ghosts.

Life can become difficult when out of sync with your heart-felt desires.

Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.

Tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep! He, like the world, his ready visit pays Where fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes.

Ten thousand things there are which we believe merely upon the authority or credit of those who have spoken or written them.

Writers speak for those who are kept in silence

Follow your passion. Nothing - not wealth, success, accolades or fame - is worth spending a lifetime doing things you don't enjoy.

You refuse to own yourself, you permit others to do it for you

I'm not some kind of machine that paints pictures.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.