Popular quotes about French! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 102
We need French chaplains and imams, French-speaking, who learn French, who love France. And who adhere to its values. And also French financing.
Manuel VallsOSS 117 and maybe Un Balcon Sur La Mer directed by Nicole Garcia. It's a typical French movie with typical French themes with French actors, a French director.
Jean DujardinThe French are not rude. They just happen to hate you. But that is no reason to bypass this beautiful country, whose master chefs have a well-deserved worldwide reputation for trying to trick people into eating snails. Nobody is sure how this got started. Probably a couple of French master chefs were standing around one day, and they found a snail, and one of them said: 'I bet that if we called this something like `escargot,' tourists would eat it.' Then they had hearty laugh, because 'escargot' is the French word for 'fat crawling bag of phlegm.'
Dave BarryI have many, many editions of the books, and they are all rather different. In the end, the one I used was the most recent French translation. French suits the tales well, and it's a beautiful translation. The Italian one is good as well... English has fallen short.
Marina WarnerFrench rhetorical models are too narrow for the English tradition. Most pernicious of French imports is the notion that there is no person behind a text. Is there anything more affected, aggressive, and relentlessly concrete than a Parisan intellectual behind his/her turgid text? The Parisian is a provincial when he pretends to speak for the universe.
Camille PagliaYou know why the French don't want to bomb Saddam Hussein? Because he hates America, he loves mistresses, and he wears a beret. He is French, people.
Conan O'BrienTo me there are two Hitlers: one who existed until the end of the French war; the other begins with the Russian campaign. In the beginning he was genial and pleasant. He would have extraordinary willpower and unheard-of influence on people. The important thing to remember is that the first Hitler, the man who I knew until the end of the French war, had much charm and goodwill. He was always frank. The second Hitler, who existed from the beginning of the Russian campaign until his suicide, was always suspicious, easily upset, and tense. He was distrustful to an extreme degree.
Hermann GoringIn the 20th century, the French managed to get a death on the myth that they produce the world's best food. The hype has been carefully orchestrated, and despite the fact that the most popular food in the last quarter has undoubtedly been Italian, the French have managed to maintain that mental grip.
Clarissa Dickson WrightIn the past the French came to Germany less with the desire to understand it than with a zealous desire to interpret, to analyze it dispassionately something for which their training at the Ecole Normale Superieure or the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and the French language superbly equipped them to do.
Walter AbishThere are reports that French President Francois Hollande had an affair with an actress who is 18 years younger than him. It's pretty serious. Under French law, he could face up to 30 high fives.
Jimmy FallonIn the same period that the Americans have lived under one constitution our French friends notched up five. A Punch cartoon has a 19th century Englishman asking a librarian for a copy of the French constitution, only to be told: 'I am sorry Sir, we do not stock periodicals.'
Margaret ThatcherI even watched Mulholland Drive in French... it didn't make much more sense in French, but I have to say, it didn't make any less sense either.
Tom DunneSome words, you know, it's amazing but some words would come only in French, and when I speak French, it would only come in English. And so the adjustment is very difficult sometimes.
Juliette BinocheThere is a song of Gainsbourg that Jane Birkin sang, and the words are beautiful in French. It says, "Le jeu et les moi." It's impossible to translate, because it has a very nice sound. It sounds so lovely in French. So I took that because it was the subject: I and myself and myself and I. Which is, in a way, boring, because it is a contradiction.
Agnes VardaI started to write because of my dream to become a filmmaker. I got to know about a film school in Paris and it was my goal to get there. To do that I knew I had to learn French. In order to practice I started to write journals in French. The effort I made to master what I regarded a bad thing - a language owned by the rich Moroccans - brought me the ability to write.
Abdellah TaiaI think that what people abroad want from French film, inside French film becomes our worst fear, "Oh, another film about love!"
Louis GarrelNever say "Au revoir" unless you have been talking French, or are speaking to a French person.
Emily PostI've wanted to make a film about French youth since I went to Cannes with my first film 'Kids' in 1995 ... Scribe's screenplay is about French kids today, and the world today. Just like my films 'Kids' and 'Ken Park', this will be a movie like you have never seen before.
Larry ClarkMy mother likes what I cook, but doesn't think it's French. My wife is Puerto Rican and Cuban, so I eat rice and beans. We have a place in Mexico, but people think I'm the quintessential French chef.
Jacques PepinBecause I was born in Casablanca and my parents were from the south of Spain, I do not have a big central root in France. I feel French but in a few ways, not at all French.
Jean RenoMy mother, she's the one who's gifted with language. She can speak Japanese, of course, Tagalog, which is a Filipino dialect, Spanish as well as English. And I speak a little bit Japanese because I've had the opportunity to work alongside Japanese people. And a little bit of German, a little bit of Portuguese because of work. A little bit of French because of work. But then, if you asked me to carry-on an everyday conversation, I would fail miserably.
Tamlyn TomitaShe reached inside the wide ruffle and pulled out a little vial. โPoison?โ asked Lady Maccon, tilting her head to one side. โCertainly not. Something far more important: perfume. We cannot very well have you fighting crime unscented, now, can we?โ โOh.โ Alexia nodded gravely. After all, Madame Lefoux was French. โCertainly not.
Gail CarrigerFurther, not only the United States, but the French, British, Germans and the United Nations all thought Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction before the United States intervened.
Jim GerlachFranchesca and Sharkey, my French bulldogs, have their own blog. And they are brilliant at it.
Martha StewartThe whole history between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is complicated. We share the island of Hispaniola, and Haiti occupied the Dominican Republic for twenty-two years after 1804 for fear that the French and Spanish would come back and reinstitute slavery. So we have this unique situation of being two independent nations on the same island, but with each community having its own grievance.
Edwidge DanticatIn spite of all the skills that I do have, to relate to the normal world I have no applicable skills. I can speak Russian, I can speak French. I know about Chanel. Especially vintage Chanel. I know what Halston is. All of these things, but they can't really be applied to a nine-to-five.
Johnny WeirIt's easy to forget how central the French people are in everything we mean when we say Europe.
John Dos PassosThe Treatise of the Three Impostors is a book that enjoyed centuries of notorious nonexistence until (as Voltaire would say) it became necessary to invent it. Georges Minois writes with empathy, erudition, and a novelist's sense of buildup and timing, weaving in the parallel story of Europe's courageous freethinkers. In the face of today's social and even legal pressures against criticizing religion, it is good to see an honorable French tradition asserting itself.
Joscelyn GodwinIf a lump of soot falls into the soup and you cannot conveniently get it out, stir it well in and it will give the soup a French taste.
Jonathan SwiftI am definitely pro-European, even pro-global, and house music and electronic music has developed a network all over the world, between record shops in Berlin, Tokyo, London, Chicago, Minneapolis and L.A. That's really what I feel part of, rather than being French.
Thomas BangalterThere was another war-related casualty today. The French were injured when they tried to jump on our bandwagon.
Jay LenoI donโt like water. I drink Diet Coke. Nor do I smoke, or drink alcohol or even sip a cafรฉ. I donโt look after myself. I donโt do yoga, Pilates, those things. I hate physical effort, I donโt run anywhere, but I am super-energetic. Make-up? I just black my eyes and thatโs it. My hair? I get it cut on set (fashion shoots), I never go to a hairdresser. Iโm not sure Iโm French. You think Iโm not smart enough?
Emmanuelle AltI was with Brian De Palma at the time, and he said he wrote the role specifically for me. I don't know what that says about the way he saw me, since the role was of a castrating killer. Brian came one morning to the house, said "Here's your Christmas present." He wrote the character to have a Swedish accent, but since I couldn't pull that off, he switched it to French-Canadian. It was such a romantic time in my life. Everyone was young and passionate and convinced they were going to change film forever.
Margot KidderSo we know she's safe and taken care of?" Daniel asked, and she nodded. "Good. Then why don't we do something that you want to do?" "Like what?" "I don't know. What do you like to do?" "Um...." Her stomach rumbled, since crying always made her hungry. "I like eating breakfast." "That's so weird." Daniel grinned. "Because I like making French toast." "That works out, doesn't it?
Amanda HockingI love languages (I speak French and Spanish and have been studying Russian) and accents; so one definite dream role would be being able to combine those elements into a character.
Sundra OakleyWhether it's destiny or fate or whatever, I don't think I could do a French Laundry anywhere else.
Thomas KellerContrary to what certain comedians have led you to believe, the national French pastime is picnicking.
Bob HopeThe French are true romantics. They feel the only difference between a man of forty and one of seventy is thirty years of experience.
Maurice ChevalierMy History of the Jesuits is in four volumes.... This society has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or Napoleon's despotism or ideology. It has obstructed progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally.
John AdamsWe're going to draw a new map of the world, with French Polynesia as the centre of the Aquatic Age.
Joe QuirkI'm fascinated by the new iPhone. I bought it and kept trying to use it in France. "Siri, what is a good restaurant?" (In a robotic voice.) "I'm sorry, Robin. I can't give locations in France." "Why, Siri?" "I don't know." It's like she was upset with the French or something. "They seem to have an attitude I can't understand. Should I look for Germans, Robin?"
Robin Williams