Popular quotes about French! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 102
I am a guest of the French language. My poems in French are born of my interaction with the French language, which is not the same as that of a French poet.
Tahar Ben JellounIn the province of Quebec where I come from, we speak French and the only cosmopolitan city is Montreal. Every time we tackle the subject of immigration and racial tension, it's an issue that concerns Montreal. Also, in Quebec, we have this added issue that we want people to speak French, because French is always on the verge of disappearing to some extent. I work, play and do everything in French.
Philippe FalardeauMy way of remaining French was the financing scheme I used for Quest for Fire, with Fox funds, since it started as a 100% American production. The film was not in French and yet was French in style, reflecting my personality.
Jean-Jacques AnnaudThe image foreigners have of French cuisine is fattening and very fancy food. But it's not true - French food isn't just rich. The word "healthy" doesn't exist in French. We have many, many words, but not that one. To me, healthy means paying close attention to feeding people.
Alain DucasseThat certain snobbery of certainly the Parisian - combined with a complete denial of your historical legacy, is just awful. That's a funny thing about France. Saul Bellow wrote somewhere that he saw right through the French. He lived there. He wrote The Adventures of Augie March in Paris, and there's no one better than him to say what's unbearable about the French.
Martin AmisThere was French kissing, and then there was Cajun French kissing. Spicier, harder, wilder.
Kresley ColeShe set about preparing her supper. It would have to be one of those classically simple meals, the sort that French peasants are said to eat and that enlightened English people sometimes enjoy rather self-consciously - a crusty French loaf, cheese, and lettuce and tomatoes from the garden. Of course there should have been wine and a lovingly prepared dressing of oil and vinegar, but Dulcie drank orange squash and ate mayonnaise that came from a bottle.
Barbara PymHo joined the French socialist party, the first Vietnamese to be a member of a French political party.
Wilfred BurchettMovies in this country, its very complicated, and we could bang on about it forever, but the French movie industry is very different because its very obviously French.
Mick JaggerShe's French, so she's teaching them French, and their previous nanny was Spanish, so they're fluent in Spanish.
Gwyneth PaltrowJust remember, what the French say. No, probably not the French, they've got a president or something. The Brits, maybe, or the Swedes. You know what I mean?" "No, Matthew. What do they say?" "The king is dead, that's what they say. The king is dead. Long live the king.
Neil GaimanI don't flatter myself with much dependence upon the present disposition of the Eastern Indians, who are many ways liable to be drawn into a rupture with us by the artifices of the French, their own weakness and the influence which the French Missionary Priests have over them.
William ShirleyThe frontiers are not east or west, north or south; but wherever a man fronts a fact, though that fact be a neighbor, there is anunsettled wilderness between him and Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, farther still, between him and it. Let him build himself a log house with the bark on where he is, fronting IT, and wage there an Old French war for seven or seventy years, with Indians and Rangers, or whatever else may come between him and the reality, and save his scalp if he can.
Henry David ThoreauTo Americans Boris Vian has long been one of the hidden glories of French literature. In I Spit on Your Graves, he wrote an utterly untypical work, a blast from his Id that may well have killed him. Even now, with misogyny disguised as racial justice, its venom remains potent and disturbing, in equal parts appalling and riveting. It is a singular book, not for the squeamish, and not to be passed by.
Jim KrusoeIf you look at the Oscars and look at the Best Foreign Language series, you see that the films are coming from everywhere - from Quebec, Israel, Poland, and Belgium. It's not the usual French, German, etc. This category is opening up to socially engaged and political films. I think we're going to see a cross over to the main categories also. It's part of this global environment now and I'm grateful that the Academy is having this window on world cinema.
Philippe FalardeauPeople say 'Why would you learn Dutch? Nobody speaks it. Why not French?' Even the Dutch say that to me! I say because I want to live here, I think it's only common courtesy that I speak the language.
Anthony GearyThe French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don't know.
P. J. O'RourkePalestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French.
Mahatma GandhiI have had some problems because the French don't like people to have success, they don't like the number one.
Alain ProstWho hasn't made mistakes? I once french kissed a dog at a party to try to impress what turned out to be a very tall 12 year old.
LIZWe need the security standards to apply to the internet. We need to be able to trust that when we send our emails through Verizon, that Verizon isn't sharing with the NSA, that Verizon isn't sharing them with the FBI or German intelligence or French intelligence or Russian intelligence or Chinese intelligence.
Edward SnowdenI loved American universities. In many ways, they are better organized - certainly than French universities.
Thomas PikettyThey were nothing like the French people I had imagined. If anything, they were too kind, too generous and too knowledgable in the fields of plumbing and electricity.
David SedarisIn Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence.
Julian BarnesThe new French theme park based on Napoleon is named Napoleon's Bivouac, and will honor Napoleon with rides, battle reenactments, and the brutal March on Moscow ride. That's a walk-in freezer you stand in for 18 months while you try to eat a dead horse.
Peter SagalThe German-French friendship is indispensable for Europe. And I will never let myself be carried away to making statements that would change it.
Francois HollandeMainly I was able to perform with music - I played the French horn, I would sing, and I was a drummer in the pipe band. So I think it was a way to show off.
Ewan McGregorThe American people are not naifs who yearn for isolationism, but they are starting to ask some hard questions about the way we have been doing business for 50 years, and it may well be time to grant the French, Canadians, Germans, Turks, South Koreans, and a host of others their wishes for independence from us: polite friendship - but no alliances, no bases, no money, no trade concessions, and no more begging for the privilege of protecting them.
Victor Davis HansonI shot for French and British Vogue. The British Vogue one featured clothes by Chloe and was shot at Highgate and the John Soane Museum. It came out much better in my opinion. I only did one day and was working with my own make-up and hair people and a model who I've known for years.
Nan GoldinThe nation-state became powerful in the wake of the French Revolution, whereas the nation-state has become powerless in light of globalization.
Grace Lee BoggsA certain type of critic doesn't really want French movies to be visual. They think movies started from books and they forgot this part of moviemaking, like Chaplin and Buster Keaton, which I didn't forget.
Audrey TautouThe truth then is, that the Russian Comintern is still confessedly engaged in endeavoring to foment war in order to facilitate revolution, and that one of its chief organizers, Lozovsky, has been installed as principal adviser to Molotov...A few months ago he wrote in the French publication, L Vie Ouvriere...that his chief aim in life is the overthrow of the existing order in the great Democracies.
Denis FaheySo 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 feel pretty stupid that I don't know any foreign languages. I wish I knew French or Arabic or Chinese.
Bill GatesDid they find something wanting in you, Gemma, at the party? You didnโt speak too freely or behaveโฆstrangely?โ I grew claws and bayed at the moon. I confessed that I eat the hearts of small children. I told them I like the French.
Libba BrayHow can people say they don't eat eggplant when God loves the color and the French love the name? I don't under'stand.
Jeff SmithWe want to represent all the French people with ideas that are neither left nor right: patriotism, defense of the identity and sovereignty of the people. If a person like me is described as being extreme-left and extreme-right at the same time, then that isn't far off the mark.
Marine Le PenThere is tragic evidence to show that the paintings at the French prehistoric art sites are deteriorating.
Louis LeakeyI remember when Lindbergh arrived in Paris, I was one of the first persons to know about his landing, because as the French people know that I was born in St. Louis, thinking I would be very proud to announce it to the public, they gave me the news first. I was then starring in the 'Folies Bergere.'
Josephine BakerInstagram - it's fun, but Facebook, no, just here and there. I use Instagram as a kick, like when somebody tells me to check out so-and-so's Instagram account to check out their French toast or a trip to Tanzania. But I don't have an account.
David Remnick