Gustave Flaubert Quotes

To copy the truth can be a good thing, but to invent the truth is better, much better.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

I don't believe that anything's totally invented... If you're completely inventing a story, there wouldn't be an urge to tell it.

You can be very honest without telling the truth, at least in art.

We call ourselves creators and we just copy.

I never fantasized or invented a thing, not one thing. I knew every single thing I ever wrote about.

Fashion isn't interesting when it comes from an uninspired place.

I try to get to those peculiar and particular things that you never think of to say.

In art, anything goes, and if it goes, it goes.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

Art revolves around creating something that isn't there.

Rules and models destroy genius and art.

There are no original ideas. There are only original people.

You can't make experimental work by copying past work.

Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.

Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid.

There are no rules in art.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best - make it all up - but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

The element of truth in the concept of genius is to be sought in the object, in what is open, not confined by repetition.

If you're not trying to be real, you don't have to get it right. That's art.

Creativity runs across many categories in life, from the arts-and-crafts project a mum or dad does with their kids, to the bestselling author's manuscript, to the designs of the hairdresser, to the creations of the computer programming genius.

Fiction lags after truth.

I make it all up, and all of it is true.