Quotes About French

I feel very close to French culture and to the French humanism, which occasionally one finds, even in the highest places. And therefore, all of my books have been written in French.

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.

My film is in French. It's not something folkloric. It's who we are. There's this tension about immigrants coming in. Will they learn French? Will they adapt? In this film, I'm on the reverse side because Monsieur Lazhar comes from a society where French is also the second language.

Now I’m really glad that I speak French, because, let’s face it, girls dig it when a guy speaks French. They call it the language of love, and that ain’t no coincidence. Plus, I love my French fans! Très jolie!

An important United Nations environmental conference went past 6:00 in the evening when the interpreters' contracted working conditions said they could leave. They left, abandoning the delegates unable to talk to each other in their native languages. The French head of the committee, who had insisted on speaking only in French throughout the week suddenly demonstrated the ability to speak excellent English with English-speaking delegates.

When we strengthen our relations with the Gulf states, when we cooperate with the Arabs, everybody asks if we are looking for a new geopolitical place. But in the Middle East and the Gulf, you can find German, French and British goods everywhere. German relations to these states are very good, as are English and French relations. Does this make them Arab-oriented?

We once discussed which were the cleanest troops in the trenches, taken by nationalities. We agreed on a descending-order like this: English and German Protestants; Northern Irish, Welsh and Canadians; Irish and German Catholics; Scots; Mohammedan Indians; Algerians; Portugese; Belgians; French. We put the Belgians and French there for spite; they could not have been dirtier than the Algerians and the Portugese.

I met my wife through playing golf. She is French and couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak French, so there was little chance of us getting involved in any boring conversations - that's why we got married really quickly.

According to the management expert Peter F. Drucker, the term "entrepreneur" (from the French, meaning "one who takes into hand") was introduced two centuries ago by the French economist Jean-Baptiste Say to characterize a special economic actor-not someone who simply opens a business, but someone who "shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield." The twentieth-century growth economist Joseph A. Schumpeter characterized the entrepreneur as the source of the "creative destruction" necessary for major economic advances.

The Iranian government prevented journalists from marching in solidarity with the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre yet it organized flag-burning protests against the French embassy, that hasn't ingratiated them to a French nuclear negotiating team that is deeply cynical about the nature of the Iranian regime.

She 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.

I 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.

I have ten bucks in my pocket - what to spend it on? French fries - ten dollars' worth of french fries, ultimate fantasy.

The French are funny, sex is funny, and comedies are funny, yet no French sex comedies are funny.

I'm ready to become a French person amongst French people, and more than ever I have the love for my country deeply ingrained in my heart.

In France, they make you feel that you cannot be two things at the same time. You can't be French and Arabic; you can't be French and Muslim.

My 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.

It may be a blessing in disguise...Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. Haitians were originally under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal. Ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other.

What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.

In New York I pretty much live in diners - I order French Fries, Diet Coke floats and lots of coffee.

French was the only language we had in common, and even that was like a dialect we had picked up at a rummage sale, rusty and missing a lot of essential parts.

I painted with my husband a portrait of a naked Serge Gainsbourg draped with a French flag, and it hangs in our bedroom. I love gritty and dark art like what the German couple Herakut does.

You can't have a novel without real, believable people, and once you get into either too theoretical a novel or too philosophical a novel, you get into the dangers that the French novel has discovered in the past 50 or 60 years. And you get into a sort of aridity. No, you have to have real, identifiable people to whom the reader reacts in a way as if they were real people.

I think Brian Moore's gnashers are the kind you get from a DIY shop and hammer in yourself. He is the only player we have who looks like a French forward.

Reactions [on my 1979 Massey lectures] were from Anglophones. I'm one. But I'm terrible at French. In fact, there was practically no reaction.

With a very few exceptions, every word in the French vocabulary comes straight from the Latin.

I have had some problems because the French don't like people to have success, they don't like the number one.

I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I'd never have. Burn the Amazon rain forests. Pump chlorofluorocarbons straight up to gobble the ozone. Open the dump valves on supertankers and uncap offshore oil wells. I wanted to kill all the fish I couldn't afford to eat, and smother the French beaches I'd never see. I wanted the whole world to hit bottom.

The English did not come to America from a mere love of adventure, nor to truck with or convert the savages, nor to hold offices under the crown, as the French to a great extent did, but to live in earnest and with freedom.

New Orleans: The least annoying French place on Earth.

I wanted to write about what we were doing at the French Laundry, the recipes and the stories.

Let's be honest - Bill Murray was onto something when he laughed at Andie MacDowell's degree in 19th century French poetry in 'Groundhog Day'.

The 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.

Shakespeare, he's in the alley with his pointed shoes and his bells, speaking to some French girl who says she knows me well.

I still feel that French cooking is the most important in the world, one of the few that has rules. If you follow the rules, you can do pretty well.

The fact is, beneath the hype, Iraqis will soon appreciate American help and idealism far more than French perfidy. It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom - never.

I cling to the basic set of tenets laid out in Tom Wolfe's 'New Journalism' - to get out there like the great French novelists of the 19th century and study life. I am a Tom Wolfe fan of the first order.

Jean-Marie Le Pen is a holocaust denier who was convicted and fined for dismissing Nazi concentration camps as a, quote, "Detail in History." But he kept running this anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, populist unapologetic xenophobic far right party in French politics.

That mainstream English is essential to our self-preservation is indisputable . . . but it is not necessary to abandon Spoken Soul to master Standard English, any more than it is necessary to abandon English to learn French or to deprecate jazz to appreciate classical music.

I'm French, so I'm quite lazy about exercising, and I smoke. But I do love going for a run in the morning with my dog. That's all.

I 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.

So 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?

Contrary to what certain comedians have led you to believe, the national French pastime is picnicking.

Americans are just beginning to regard food the way the French always have. Dinner is not what you do in the evening before something else. Dinner is the evening.

We 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.

The odour of Burgundy, and the smell of French sauces, and the sight of clean napkins and long loaves, knocked as a very welcome visitor at the door of our inner man.

There is no French town in which the wounds inflicted on the battle-field are not bleeding.

We were only there for five days and during that time Tom was a bit annoyed that the French were more interested in me and my schoolgirl outfit than him and his long scarf.