If you participate in life, you don’t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much. The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature. All the misfortunes Providence inflicts on him come from his stubborness in denying that maxim.
Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmüller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, Belknap Press
