Quotes About French

When I arrived at Columbia, I gave up acting and became interested in all things French. French poetry, French history, French literature.

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.

The number of those who have to be assimilated to the majority is not too high. It remains small compared with the numbers of the majority. But there is one thing - and that is the main reason for this digression - that French and British have in common: to this day they have an immense pride in being French, in being British. The fact that in the meantime both have come down to earth a little has not yet affected their pride in their own nationality and the fact that, if I may express it that way, they are mutual admiration societies: how fine the British are, how fine the French are.

I love French stuff. Mmmm, french fries.

I 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.

I am not a great French woman. George Sand, Marguerite Duras and Simone de Beauvoir are great French women.

French 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.

I grew up in France, my first language was French, and I tend to gravitate towards French cooking.

There was French kissing, and then there was Cajun French kissing. Spicier, harder, wilder.

I never dream in French, but certain French words seem better or more fun than English words - like 'pois chiches' for chick peas!

Movies 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.

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.

Some 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.

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

I only speak a little pigeon French. Just enough to get by with the little French pigeons.

I'd rather be thought as an international actress rather than a French one. Because I don't know what's coming up for me, my ambition is not to be typecast. So I'm working on my English accent, as well as my American one. I don't want to be like 'Okay, I'm French, and I want to succeed in Hollywood!'

The French legend is a very simple one. All really beautiful clothes are designed in the houses of the French couturiers and all women want those clothes.

It is rarely remembered now that socialism in its beginnings was frankly authoritarian. It began quite openly as a reaction against the liberalism of the French Revolution. The French writers who laid its foundation had no doubt that their ideas could be put into practice only by a strong dictatorial government. The first of modern planners, Saint-Simon, predicted that those who did not obey his proposed planning boards would be 'treated as cattle'.

Because I cannot write my native language and have no native home anymore, and am amazed by that horrible homelessness of all French-Canadian s abroad in America.

My 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.

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

Obviously, I would have been happier if Canada had not been conquered in the past by the English, if this part of North America had remained French, but you can't rewrite history.

Culture and tradition have to change little by little. So 'new' means a little twist, a marriage of Japanese technique with French ingredients. My technique. Indian food, Korean food; I put Italian mozzarella cheese with sashimi. I don't think 'new new new.' I'm not a genius. A little twist.

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.

I had acne late, in college. My skin used to be really flawless. Went to college, became a vegetarian, ate a lot of cheese - big mistake. Here I am trying to be healthy and I'm eating grilled cheese sandwiches and French fries every day, having mad eruptions all over my face.

Very often with an American movie, the end is very happy and you just feel good when you go out. When you go to a French movie, it's kind of like, "oh!", and you can't go out; you're stuck in your chair. It goes so deeply inside of the heart.

They 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.

It is a curious fact that the word essayist showed up in English before it existed in French.

Even if I think in English, it's more a language of acting than French.

I 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.

WHEAT, n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can be made; . . . also for bread. The French are said to eat more bread "per capita" of population than any other people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable.

Sauces comprise the honor and glory of French cookery. They have contributed to its superiority, or pre-eminence, which is disputed by none. Sauces are the orchestration and accompaniment of a fine meal, and enable a good chef or cook to demonstrate his talent.

There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits. (Preface to the French edition).

The nation-state became powerful in the wake of the French Revolution, whereas the nation-state has become powerless in light of globalization.

Oh, the Germans classify, but the French arrange.

What would be the difference if we retreated and let the French and Germans make decisions for the world? We tried that twice in the last century. Isolationsim, refusing to accept our role in the world, and delaying our response to evildoers ultimately cost fifty-three million lives in World War 2 alone. The preemption policy of the Bush administration, taking the war to the enemy and exporting democracy and freedom, has liberated fifty million.

The study of motivation goes back to the Greeks. Their sports were essential to their education. They saw in sports the integration of body, mind and soul, the creation of beauty, the mastering of athletics, and the challenge of competition. A French sociologist points this out. "Sports," he wrote, was part of the education of the citizen. He was expected to engage in exercise for a whole series of reasons that had to do with the shaping of the citizen; the relation between moral good and physical good; and the growth of a person.

John XXI was a very great pope and he's the one who actually corrected the liturgy. He did so because of his friend Jules Isaac, a French Jewish historian who was a friend of John Paul, of John 23rd, and he convinced him and he changed the liturgy, no more Jew, the perfidious Jew and so forth and now, and don't speak any more of the Jews killing Christ. Things have changed.

I have a nice little house in LA. Well, the bedroom is nice. I have French doors in the bedroom. They don't open unless I lick them.

One difference between French appeasement and American appeasement is that France pays ransom in cash and gets its hostages back while the United States pays ransom in arms and gets additional hostages taken.

So we came to the Ritz hotel and the Ritz Hotel was divine. Because when a girl can sit in a delightful bar and have delicious champagne cocktails and look at all the important French people in Paris, I think it is divine.

The 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.

I wish I had taken Spanish instead of French in high school. I could eavesdrop on a lot more conversations on the subway if I knew Spanish.

The French make two mistakes about me. They think I'm an intellectual because I wear these glasses and they think I'm an artist because my films lose money.

The French are true romantics. They feel the only difference between a man of forty and one of seventy is thirty years of experience.

Chestnuts in stuffing tastes like someone chewed up a tree branch and then French-kissed it into your mouth.

If we can sleep without dreaming, it is well that painful dreams are avoided. If, while we sleep, we can have any pleasing dreams, it is as the French say, tant gagne, so much added to the pleasure of life.

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.