In my view you cannot claim to have seen something until you have photographed it.

— Émile Zola

In Paris, everything's for sale: wise virgins, foolish virgins, truth and lies, tears and smiles.

— Émile Zola

It all seemed a hollow sham now - that strict code, that conscientious virtue that condemned her to the sterile joys of pious women! No, no, she'd had enough of that; she wanted to live!

— Émile Zola

It was always the same; other people gave up loving before she did. They got spoiled, or else they went away; in any case, they were partly to blame. Why did it happen so? She herself never changed; when she loved anyone, it was for life. She could not understand desertion; it was something so huge, so monstrous that the notion of it made her little heart break.

— Émile Zola

It was at times like this that one of those waves of bestiality ran through the mine, the sudden lust of the male that came over a miner when he met one of these girls on all fours, with her rear in the air and her buttocks busting out of her breeches.

— Émile Zola

I would rather die of passion than of boredom.

— Émile Zola

Kings may usurp thrones, republics may be established, but the town scarcely stirs. Plasma sleeps while Paris fights.

— Émile Zola

Men were springing up, a black avenging host was slowly germinating in the furrows, thrusting upward for the harvests of future ages. And very soon their germination would crack the earth asunder.

— Émile Zola

Monsieur Operand died very quietly - a victim of his own honesty. He had lived a useless life, and he went off, worthy to the last, weary of all the petty things in life, done to death by the heartless conduct of the only human beings that he had ever loved.

— Émile Zola

Never subject to the rules, believing that the correct judgement and healthy nature keep her in the honesty she lived in.

— Émile Zola