I see by your letter to my father that you are rather afraid the French may invade England.
I obtained a Woodrow Wilson Doctoral Fellowship and entered the graduate program in History at the University of California. With no Greek or French and minimal Latin and German, I was in no position to pursue my classical interests, so I began work at Berkeley with little more than an open mind.
The great thing about American women is their energy and the way they love to dress. French women don’t really dress; they are too conservative, as it’s always a question of money. In America, women are powerful and strong, determined. If they want to be an object, they choose to be in control.
It is my great good luck the words I use are English words, which means I live in a very old nation of open borders; a rich, deep, multi-layered, promiscuous universe, infused with Latin, German, French, Greek, Arabic and countless other tongues.
I’m terrible at languages. I’m trying to learn Spanish. I tried to learn French as a kid.
Play with Spain? I think that’s already closed, but even so, I opt for France because I’m French. I don’t have dual citizenship, and I’m not going to ask for it.
The French never allow a distinguished son of France to lack a statue.
One must just keep having good seasons with many great matches, whether one is with the club or the French national side. For me, this must be a player’s goal in his head, even if it’s an individual trophy, and the first thought must be on the collective.
The first thing I have to do to erase my French accent is think that it is actually possible, whereas for the moment, I think it’s not. I have a lot of work.
Ho joined the French socialist party, the first Vietnamese to be a member of a French political party.
My sister Mathilde is an actress, but more like a French Jennifer Aniston. She’s famous just in France. She’s very commercial and does big comedies. So, acting was part of my family, and that’s how I was raised.
When I finally decided to do the show, I only had two weeks to learn the choreography and the songs in French.
I would rather do really good French films than ‘American Pie.’
What I like about the American woman is she usually has a lot of dynamism. In the U.S., women have a tendency to go forward, to be more exaggerated than in Europe. Many times the rough ideas come from the States, then they are refined in Europe. The American women and the French women are still the best-dressed.
The British Empire passed quickly and with less humiliation than its French and Dutch counterparts, but decades later, the vicious politics of partition still seems to define India and Pakistan.
I never thought I could win the French Open.
The most classic French dessert around the holidays is the Christmas log, with butter cream. Two flavors. Chocolate and coconut. My first job in the kitchen when I was a boy was to make these Christmas logs.
When I used to have a show on French TV, people would ask me how my jacket stayed spotless while cooking. Your whole area has to be clean – and you have to keep it that way.
I learned French before I learned Spanish.
I do like potato chips, French fries and Barney’s burgers in L.A. with seasoned curly fries.
The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years.
‘Entrepreneur’ is a French word.
Any quality player can adjust well to the different demands. It is like a good tennis player who is expected to adjust to the clay at the French Open, the grass at Wimbledon, the hard courts of the U.S. and the heat of the Australian Open. A professional is expected to do all that.
I love French stuff. Mmmm, french fries.
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.
I like to talk about my obsession with french fries because I don’t want people to think that ‘Let’s Move’ is about complete, utter deprivation. It’s about moderation and real-life changes and ideas that really work for families.
Many of the books I read, I had to read them in French, English, or Italian, because they hadn’t been translated into Spanish.
I’d like to be reincarnated as a French tart. They’re so beautiful and delicate – they’re like my opposite. I’m more of a comfort food: goat cheese with garlic.
Everything depends on whether we have for opponents those French tricksters or those daring rascals, the English. I prefer the English. Frequently their daring can only be described as stupidity. In their eyes it may be pluck and daring.
It wasn’t a new idea. During the war against the French we had this kind of broadcast for the French soldiers.
I love French auto design of the early ’50s, ’60s, early ’70s of Citorens, Renaults, and Peugeots. They’re so unique.
I was on the cover of French ‘Grazia,’ which was amazing. It was all over Paris!
It is my wish that my ashes may repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people, whom I have loved so well.
I’m quite into the French way – simple elegance with just a suggestion of sexiness, nothing vulgar.
My dear citizens, fellow citizens, French people, this 6th of May, have just chosen change by bringing me the presidency of the French republic. I feel the honor, which has been given to me and the task, the important task faced beyond – in front of you to serve my country.
I didn’t want to read French or write it; it was like a boycott, a rejection.
How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns?
Every time a director calls me and says, ‘If you practice a lot in two months, can you be an American?’ And I always tell them, ‘Well, maybe but I’m French. So it’s going to be hard to be someone else.’
My mom read French ‘Elle’ when I was a little girl, and so, when I was 15 or 16, I said, ‘I want to work in fashion.’
The readership of Victorian novels, when they were published, was much less diverse. People were probably white, and had enough money to be literate. Very often, there are phrases in Italian, German and French that are left untranslated.
I 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.
I think I should learn French and be a better cook – basic, really good life stuff.
These irresponsible acts, which cannot have any justification whatsoever, are to be fully condemned. In these appalling circumstances, I want to offer you the most sincere condolences, both in my name and in that of the French people.
For a brief moment, Ian Fleming made being an Englishman seem sexy, even to the French. He should have been awarded a knighthood, even possibly the Garter.
When you live in America, it’s kind of insular – the news coverage that you get – unless you’re really smart about it and find more international news coverage. I’ve learned that from my husband. In the French culture, they talk politics.
The French are pretty thin-skinned. The few times I mentioned a French writer in ‘City Boy,’ the relatives would ring up in high dudgeon. I once wrote a mocking review of Marguerite Duras in the ‘New York Review of Books,’ and good friends of mine in France got very angry.
My first public impression was my French teacher, Derek Swift.
Theatre has no national identity. It is something for the world, whether it is Irish, English, or French.
The Russians are very much more up and down than the French.
Mainly 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.
I’m pretty good with languages. I know a bit of French and actually want to live in France some day so that I can get fluent. I think it’d be tragic to go through life only knowing one language.
The French no longer respect their language, because they no longer love themselves, and, no longer loving themselves, they no longer love what was the instrument of their glory – their language.
At that moment of realization I knew that I had been blind because I had wished not to see; it was only then that I realised, at last, that all these dead men, French and Germans, were brothers, and I was the brother of them all.
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.
One really interesting thing for me was learning about kitchen etiquette, and the differences between an Indian kitchen and a French one. They’re different in atmosphere, and also in how chefs maneuver within them.
I can bake. I made myself some nice French fries once. But otherwise I just eat out. Lots of salad bars.
I love to make a one-pot meal – think stir-fry but in the French Fricassee. I start with what takes the longest to roast and then add vegetables, fresh herbs, and starch until the meal is complete in one shot.
In my day, MI6 – which I called the Circus in the books – stank of wartime nostalgia. People were defined by secret cachet: one man did something absolutely extraordinary in Norway; another was the darling of the French Resistance. We didn’t even show passes to go in and out of the building.
