Quote of the Day (Gustave Flaubert, on the Need to Write for Yourself)

“Better to work for yourself alone. Do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isn’t that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides, who reads? And what do they read? And what do they admire?” —French novelist Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), letter of June 2, 1850, to Louis Bouilhet, in The Letters of Gustave Flaubert:1830-1857, edited by Francis Steegmuller (1980)