“Books are not made in the same way babies are, but rather as pyramids are, following a premeditated design, and by hoisting great blocks one atop the other by dint of sheer brute strength, time, and sweat.” — Gustave Flaubert from letter to Ernest Feydeau, late 1857, quoted in The Perpetual Orgy: Flaubert amd Madame Bovary by Mario Vargas Llosa. (New York: Farrarl Straus Giroux, 1986)