I go dreaming into the future, where I see nothing, nothing. I have no plans, no idea, no project, and, what is worse, no ambition. Something – the eternal 'what's the use?' – sets its bronze barrier across every avenue that I open up in the realm of hypothesis.

The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857 (ed. Harvard University Press, 1980) - ISBN: 9780674526365