Quotes About French

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 transformations of the French empire itself or of French power structures themselves as well as the emergence of a kind of language of equal rights starting with the American Revolution and the French Revolution provided an opportunity and in some ways connected with other kinds of ground level desires or hopes and ideologies for freedom that were coming out of the plantation regime itself.

I love French style from the Thirties and Forties. French movie stars like Jean Gabin and Yves Montand had so much natural, effortless style.

The key to the U.N.'s global warming study was man's use of aerosol spray. You have to know the French were involved in a study concluding that Arrid Extra Dry is destroying the Earth. In a world in which everyone smelled, the French would be at no disadvantage. Aerosol spray. How convenient.

Oh, I'm not English, I cannot talk on behalf of an English person. I'm French. I can say about French. They are quite emotional, though, and they talk about their emotions

French novels generally treat of the relations of women to the world and to lovers, after marriage; consequently there is a great deal in French novels about adultery, about improper relations between the sexes, about many things which the English public would not allow.

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.

It wouldn't have existed without France, and it's a French initiative. As a filmmaker, I owe everything to France - I got accepted at a French film school that takes six directors a year. Once you're in, you make films under the eye of people in the industry. You grow up in front of their eyes.

In order to translate a sentence from English into French two things are necessary. First, we must understand thoroughly the English sentence. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of expression peculiar to the French language. The situation is very similar when we attempt to express in mathematical symbols a condition proposed in words. First, we must understand thoroughly the condition. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of mathematical expression.

I 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.

Many Europeans think that all Moroccans speak French, but no. I had to make an effort to learn it when I studied French literature at the university in Rabat.

I love French films, and European films. They're not any bigger, but there's just a sort of definition, and a confidence, and strength to them. I'd always, given the option, go and see a French drama. Obviously, we probably get the better ones. But they're just sophisticated on many levels, and grown up, and quite profound - and we don't make films like that.

Because 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.

My sisters like cooking at my place. It has a bit more room, and the food tastes a little bit better. A big pot of spaghetti and sauce, some warm French bread - works all the time. I think I've been eating pasta for 26 years.

When I warned them [the French] that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken. Some chicken! Some neck!

Steven Soderbergh really likes Irréversible, that's about all I can tell you. About the making, well, it was a very particular situation, because those people all know each other, and they're all big stars. I felt like the little French guy, really. And I was very flattered to be called on that, of course, but I felt like if I didn't find something to be a little original, different, particular in the movie, I would just disappear.

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.

Wine is a part of society because it provides a basis not only for a morality but also for an environment; it is an ornament in the slightest ceremonials of French daily life, from the snack to the feast, from the conversation at the local cafT to the speech at a formal dinner.

The French would eat anything that couldn't outrun them.

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.

The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.

You 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.

Now, now. Southern ladies don’t French-kiss and tell.

The 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.

So why, after prior successes, did Obama's race/class/gender attack finally sputter out like the French at Waterloo?

London is one of the few cities where people still dress properly and fashion exists. Every day I see women who've thought about their outfits. They've picked out the bag, put on proper shoes. ... Do you know how rare it is in parts of America to actually see 'an outfit'? France? I don't want to be anti-French but there isn't a more unattractive group of people on the streets.

It would be simply suicidal to French Canadians to form a party by themselves.

The 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.

The German-French friendship is indispensable for Europe. And I will never let myself be carried away to making statements that would change it.

Good french cooking cannot be produced by a zombie cook.

Because French is the language of love, my boy. Something you should keep in mind, but will soon forget.

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.

Somebody was telling me about the French Army rifle that was being advertised on eBay the other day - the description was, 'Never shot. Dropped once.

French fries. I have been obsessed with them since I was born. I like big, big steak fries, curly fries, seasoned fries - any kind!

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.

There were the events of 1968 when young people began to ask their parents, what did you do in the war? And since the middle- or late-'70s, the French have been absolutely obsessed with the Vichy regime. They have an institute of contemporary history that turns out first-rate scholarly work. Their textbooks are accurate. Whether the students actually read them is another matter.

The 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.

I like food too much to go on some crazy diet. French fries are my favorite downfall.

He put his hand on his forehead and scoured the French department of his memory for a word. He knew it was in there. He'd put it in almost fifty years before and hadn't had cause to remove it. But for the life of him he couldn't find it.

I did not want to be taken for a fool-the typical French reason for performing the worst of deeds without remorse.

The story of my grandmother is that of a French woman from the provinces who through her perseverance and thirst for knowledge worked her way up to become the head of a school. She belonged to a generation that didn't travel much. But she believed in Europe and she wanted Europe. And she read a lot - she knew mythology, literature and the classics very well. She passed that on to me, along with the conviction that you can earn your own position in society.

51% of the French people - who are not very religious - were thinking that what "Charlie Hebdo" did was unwise. They aren't asking for a law to prevent Charlie Hebdo from publishing caricatures, but they are calling on its editors to be a bit more sensible.

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.

I had art as a major, along with English, French and History. I had dance, modern dance. In English I was allowed to write my own poetry, which I eventually got published.

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.

My favorite way to wake up is to have a certain French movie star whisper to me softly at two-thirty in the afternoon that if I want to get to Sweden in time to pick up my Nobel Prize for Literature, I had better ring for breakfast. This occurs rather less often than one might wish.

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