DEAR MOM

At every stage of my life I have shirked facing my problems in just this same way; and I shall die at eighty before having formed an opinion of myself, or, perhaps, without writing anything that would have shown me what I could do...However, I worry very little about any of this; I live like a plant, filling myself with sun and light, with colors and fresh air. I keep eating, so to speak; afterwards the digesting will have to be done, then the shitting; and the shit had better be good! That's the important thing.

Gustave Flaubert in a letter to his mother

Cairo, 5 January, 1850

(Flaubert was 28 years old at the time.)