Popular quotes about French! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 103
Writing in French is one of my ambitions. I'd like to be able to dream one day in French. Italian and French are the two languages that I'd like to know.
Benedict CumberbatchFrench women love to shop and prepare food. They love to talk about what they have bought and made. It's a deeply natural love, but one that is erased in many other cultures. Most French women learn it from their mothers, some from their fathers. But if your parents aren't French, you can still learn it yourself.
Mireille GuilianoThe Second World War had a precipitating effect in that it discredited the empires, as well as bankrupting them. Not only could you no longer, if you were a colonial subject of France in Africa, look to France as a model of power and influence and civility after what had happened in the war. Nor could the French any longer afford to run their empire. And nor could the British, although they were not discredited in the way that the French were.
Tony JudtI have been in countries where I don't know a word of the language. I tried to practice my French as much as possible. I would talk with the crew. I always order in French, but then waiters respond in English. I hate that.
Kevin KlineI write. I have read a great deal. I enjoy books. I like the wit of languages. Even French I like. I like to be able to think in different modes. I like to be able to use the language a great deal and carry on rehearsals in French.
Twyla TharpFrench 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 PagliaOne of the greatest things I've ever seen happen was the morning I opened the newspaper and it said that some very powerful government officials had decided to change the name of โfrench friesโ to โfreedoom friesโ and โfrench toastโ to โfreedom toastโ. It was impressive. I wanted to write a letter to them just to thank them, just for proving globally that they were absolute imbeciles.
Johnny DeppSeine et Danube was launched in 2003 with the help of Romanian authorities who had finally realized the necessity of promoting literature and Romanian culture in general. Along with focusing on the literature of the countries the Danube traversed (with an emphasis on Romania), we printed work that interested us from the banks of the Seine: French and French-Romanian authors like Cioran and Fondane. We dedicated our last edition to surrealism and Esthetic Onirisme.
Dumitru TepeneagI never dream in French, but certain French words seem better or more fun than English words - like 'pois chiches' for chick peas!
Lydia DavisThe real reason French women don't get fat is not genetic, but cultural, and if the French subjected themselves to the American extremes of eating and dieting, the obesity problem in France would be much worse than what has struck America.
Mireille GuilianoIn 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 WrightThe film The Conquest will be seen on many different levels and the American point of view is always more technical. The French are less technical - it's 'I like it, or I don't like it.' I hope that this film can have a life in the U.S. - it's the grand country of cinema. I grew up with Hollywood movies, so for a French director to have a film distributed in the U.S. is a real opportunity.
Xavier DurringerI like French fries," I say. I like French fries? I sound like a slow child in a made-for-TV movie.
Gayle FormanIt was always said that the big distinction between the French and the English is that the English are intelligent and the French are intellectual.
Kenneth Baker, Baron Baker of DorkingGerman and English firms operate internationally, while French firms do not. The only place where they all have work is in China. Anybody can sell himself in China!
Helmut JahnI studied French in high school and German in college and I once took a 24-hour Italian crash course. English has by far the most words in it of any other language. Our money might not be worth anything anymore, but the language is.
Roy Blount, Jr.Why don't they allow professional wrestling at the Olympics? They allow pro basketball players and hockey players. Olympic pro wrestling would be awesome. The team from Mexico could wear those Mr. X masks. The French wrestler could hit his opponent with a baguette. Or perhaps just surrender.
Craig Ferguson"The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool." Our quote of the day is, from of all people, the Marquis de Sade, the most infamous writer in all of French literature. And by the way, if you recognized that quote, you're sick.
Tucker CarlsonThe U.S. directed the war against South Vietnam. There was a political settlement in 1954. But in the late '50's the United States organized an internal repression in South Vietnam, not using its troops, but using the local apparatus it was constructing. This was a very significant and very effective campaign of violence and terrorism against the Vietminh - which was the communist-led nationalist force that fought the French. And the Vietminh at that time was adhering to the Geneva Accords, hoping that the political settlement would work out in South Vietnam.
Noam ChomskyMy mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes.
Andrea Fay FriedmanPeople 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 GearyYou get the feeling that many of my guests feel that the French language gives them entry into a more cultivated, more intelligent world, more highly civilised too, with rules.
Bernard PivotIn this country [England] it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others. The reference is to Admiral John Byng, who was executed in 1757 for failing to prevent the French from taking Minorca.
VoltaireThe stubby French painter Toulouse-Lautrec supposedly invented chocolate mousse - I find that rather hard to believe, but there you have it.
Alton BrownHow could they think Noel was hot? If this was REALLY Versailles, Noel SO would not be Louis XIV, he would be the French version of the village idiot
Sara ShepardThe difference between the extras here and in France is the French extras read books. Actually, they hide the book and pretend that they're acting. Here (in Hollywood), you can see everybody wants his break.
Berenice BejoThis is the end and the beginning of an age. This is something far greater than the French Revolution or the Reformation and we live in it.
H. G. WellsI've always wondered why there isn't a great French novel about the German occupation. The nouveau roman authors weren't interested in telling that sort of thing.
Manuel Puigthose two wholesome defects of the French people, malice and curiosity, both of which are essential to its greatness.
Marthe BibescoShakespeare, he's in the alley with his pointed shoes and his bells, speaking to some French girl who says she knows me well.
Bob DylanThink of the French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, Ciudadanos in Spain, Nowoczesna in Poland. These are early efforts to reimagine a liberalism which is neither right-wing nor left-wing in the traditional sense.
Anne ApplebaumThe French philosopher Pierre-Hyacinthe Azaรฏs (1766-1845) formalized the statement that good and evil fortune are exactly balanced in that they produce for each person an equivalent result.
Richard Arnold EpsteinI think it's important to be sincere. And I could be the most sincere just staying in [my] mother language actually. And that's the reason why I stay composing and writing in French.
StromaeA 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 TautouWhat is this thing called a kiss? French, tongue, soul, chaste, motherly, fatherly, brotherly, sisterly, ass, genital, Judas, trembling, rough, hesitant, sweet, soft, wet, dying, fevered, good-night, farewell, burning, and chocolate.
Gilbert SorrentinoAlthough most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors -- somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating -- none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries.
James A. MichenerWhen I moved to Paris in the '70s, there wasn't very much going on in film in England. So when I started doing French films, there was a natural movement toward the kind of films I wanted to do. It wasn't the reason I came, but it so happened that I stepped into a time and place that actually corresponded to what I wanted. That sometimes happens in life. And it was rather beautiful.
Charlotte RamplingThe wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write. At four o'clock in the morning, when the promise of a new day still lingered over French lands, he got up from his pallet and left for the fields, taking to pasture the half-dozen pigs whose fertility nourished him and his wife.
Jose SaramagoContrary to what certain comedians have led you to believe, the national French pastime is picnicking.
Bob HopeShe had died peacefully, in her sleep, after an evening of listening to all of her favorite Fred Astaire songs, one crackling record after another. Once the last chord of the last piece had died out, she had stood up and opened the French doors to the garden outside, perhaps waiting to breathe in the honeysuckle one more time.
Anne FortierPeople want their own laws to take precedence over those of the European Union. The French have understood that the EU does not live up to the utopia they were sold. It has distanced itself significantly from a democratic mode of operation.
Marine Le PenThere is no American history. There is no French history. There is no John Wideman. There are all these dreams that are floating around. People construct them and fight with them and criticize them, and the world goes on. I don't think the stars pay much attention.
John Edgar WidemanThe difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: the one thinks everything right that is French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.
William HazlittPolitically, [Albert Camus] was in favour of a federation, and effectively he considered that like South Africa today (or as they are trying to do), there should be a mixed population with equal rights, the same rights for the Arab and the French populations, as well as all the other races living there.
Catherine Camus