Émile Zola

Zola was obsessed with counting, counting lamp-posts, trees, doorways, and sought to take all of the “unpredictable” out of life.
-Writer's Almanac

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 begin to say the book’s no good, far inferior to my earlier ones, until I’ve wrung torture out of every page, every sentence, every word, and the very commas begin to look excruciatingly ugly. Then, when it’s finished, what a relief! Not the blissful delight of the gentleman who goes into ecstasies over his own production, but the resentful relief of a porter dropping a burden that’s nearly broken his back . . . Then it starts all over again, and it’ll go on starting all over again till it grinds the life out of me, and I shall end my days furious with myself for lacking talent, for not leaving behind a more finished work, a bigger pile of books, and lie on my death-bed filled with awful doubts about the task I’ve done, wondering whether it was as it ought to have been, whether I ought not to have done this or that, expressing my last dying breath the wish that I might do it all over again!
- Émile Zola, The Masterpiece


There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.
- Émile Zola

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.
- Émile Zola

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

Je n'ai guère de souci de beauté ni de perfection... Je n'ai souci que de vie, de lutte, de fièvre.
- Émile Zola

When you have a sorrow that is too great it leaves no room for any other.
- Émile Zola

Art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.
- Émile Zola

I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul.
- Émile Zola, J'accuse!

If people can just love each other a little bit, they can be so happy.
- Émile Zola, Germinal

The fate of animals is of far greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous.
- Émile Zola

If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.
- Émile Zola

An entire lifetime would not be long enough for you to exhaust the glance of the young harvest-girl.
- Émile Zola, Truth

Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.
- Émile Zola

And then there are always clever people about to promise you that everything will be all right if only you put yourself out a bit... And you get carried away, you suffer so much from the things that exist that you ask for what can't ever exist. Now look at me, I was well away dreaming like a fool and seeing visions of a nice friendly life on good terms with everybody, and off I went, up into the clouds. And when you fall back into the mud it hurts a lot. No! None of it was true, none of those things we thought we could see existed at all. All that was really there was still more misery-- oh yes! as much of that as you like-- and bullets into the bargain!
- Émile Zola