I love France. It’s got the sun down at the bottom, the Alps for skiing, and all that wine and food.
A lot of my travel is at least partly work, visiting schools and libraries, especially in France.
In 19th-century France, artists were part of government. Artists are very sensitive to their time. They’re very thoughtful people – it makes sense to hear what they have to say.
I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.
Today’s cinema is a global art form, it is impossible to make movies for a market the size of France, representing no more than 4% of the world’s total.
I had my father on the Under-21 team and during the World Cup in France in 1998 – and also in AC Milan for four months. So it was a weird experience, because having your father as a coach is pretty weird, and I was the captain. But he was great.
The name of our country, France, still rings out like a call to freedom.
When you do deals with France involved, you want to make sure that the government endorses your deal, understands the strategic rationale.
In France we have a saying, ‘Joie de vivre,’ which actually doesn’t exist in the English language. It means looking at your life as something that is to be taken with great pleasure and enjoy it.
It was pretty awful for us children because we never really knew the local children. Mother was keen for us to learn languages, so our travels took us to France and Italy, as well as the West Country.
Even during negotiation with HAL, Dassault felt that the cost with which the HAL will produce will be far higher than the aircraft produced in France. That was the reality.
Experts say that Britain and France have strong spy agencies; Germany’s is competent but afraid to level with its public; the rest are relatively weak, and there is no Europe-wide spy agency.
I’d rather not have an address in France but an address in Italy because I love the country.
France has been struck on the day of her national holiday – the 14th of July, Bastille Day – the symbol of liberty, because human rights are denied by fanatics, and France is clearly their target.
I love anywhere new and different. That’s the fun of travel. I’ve always loved driving through Spain, France and Italy – sometimes in an Alfa Spider.
I grew up in France, my first language was French, and I tend to gravitate towards French cooking.
That’s only in America. We don’t have French doors in France.
I really want to learn French so I think it would be great to go and live in France and maybe learn the language for a few months.
I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French.
Though there are laws against blasphemy and insult to religion in many European countries, France has institutionalised its anti-clerical past by proscribing religion from public life.
I see no reason why France and Britain should not have excellent relations – we are old allies.
Why does there exist a global American entertainment industry, but there isn’t an equivalent coming from France or Italy? This is the case simply because the English language opens the whole world to the American cinema.
I don’t have a chateau in France. There’s no private airplane or yacht.
Why PSG? Because to leave United, the biggest team in England, you need something like PSG, which is the biggest in France. I could not play in another English club.
Each country has a soul, and France’s soul is equality.
France and America have a long history of mutual loathing and longing. Americans still dream of Paris; Parisians still dream of the America they find in the movies of David Lynch.
As for the role of France and Germany: French politics is often more self-confident then German politics due to the catastrophe in the first half of the last century. If Berlin and Paris don’t agree, then it is difficult to make progress in Europe.
It’s funny because I think that both France and Britain are known for their distinctive styles, and everyone says that France is so chic and elegant but I think, more than that, French women are renowned for dressing in what suits them.
You can spend your whole life in France without ever thinking about the Legion.
France is different from the U.S.A.’s El Dorado, American Dream image.
In France, I have lots of opportunities. Maybe now I’ll be offered films in America. It’s the encounter, with the director and the story that counts.
I was thinking of going to London drama schools or to New York, because France didn’t accommodate the things I wanted to do in film.
It’s very important to say that French doesn’t belong to France and to French people. Now you have very wonderful poets and writers in French who are not French or Algerian – who are from Senegal, from Haiti, from Canada, a lot of parts of the world.
France has been maintaining a very special relationship with India on defence matters.
Everyone says Francois Mitterrand had huge charisma. But before he was president they used to call him badly dressed, old, archaic and say he knew nothing about the economy… until the day he was elected. It’s called universal suffrage. When you’re elected, you become the person that embodies France.
The States which form the northern border of the United States westward from the Great Lakes to the Pacific coast include an area several times larger than France and could contain ten Englands and still have room to spare.
Let the French ministers take care of France; we will take care of Italy!
In France, the image I had was of a shy girl – a poor lonely girl and not too good-looking. When I went to England, I had another image. I felt the journalists were much more interested in my looks than in my songs.
What unites us is an unconditional love for France.
If you love food and you love red wine and they put you in France, you’re in a good place and you’re in a bad place at the same time. You have to weigh yourself every day, and you have to have an alarm number. When you get to that number, you have to start putting it in reverse.
I did get offers from Hollywood, but they were all scripts with monsters in them. If I had done them, I would have disappeared. I would have come back to France anyway, and I would have had to start all over again and lost a lot of time.
My father died in France, and my sisters and I went over with my mum to bring back his body. I remember going to the funeral parlour in France and being given a laminated menu of coffins, and thinking, surely there is an ice cream at the back of here!
France will always be France no matter what, but America involves striving toward an ideal.
Tithing is like training wheels when it comes to giving. It’s intended to help you get started, but not recommended for the Tour de France.
When we grew up, our family and kind of gaggle of cousins would go to the south of France for the summers. And we just had a grand time.
In France we have a law which doesn’t allow the press to publish a photo that you didn’t approve. It lets the paparazzi take the picture, but if they publish this picture, you have the choice to sue the newspaper. So me, I always sued them.
The French want less Europe and more France.
The primary school I attended in Shanghai was a very liberal one, established by scholars who had return from an education in France. The children of leading families were enrolled there, including the son of a well-known man believed to be a top gangster of the underworld!
I want to be the president of all the people of France, for the patriots facing the threat of nationalism.
In France, the matches are sometimes very tight, and so it is difficult to score. A free kick can unlock a game.
There are some countries where there is not an issue with women in physics. Malaysia, for example, has physics departments where 60 per cent of undergraduates are female, and France and Italy are strong, too. It is not about ability but more about what the culture says is appropriate.
My husband is a general’s chauffeur somewhere in France.
There is not, and there will not be, any other laws and values in France other than French laws. We will not be going back – no withdrawing. No compromises!
I speak on due consideration because Britain, France, and Mexico, have abolished slavery, and all other European states are preparing to abolish it as speedily as they can.
When you get into the final week of the Tour de France, it becomes a different kind of race. As the distance and the fatigue really tell, that is when it becomes a proper test of everyone’s fitness.
I was called up for Spain against France, my international debut, and it was said that I had gastroenteritis when I had an anxiety attack. But no one wants to talk about that. Football’s not interested.
So, thanks God, our films, our first films were suddenly being appreciated by the Western media; especially France was very good, and Switzerland was very good.
Once I accidentally left my passport in Nice, France, when I was on my way to Prague. Upon arriving in Vienna, after taking an overnight, and being asked to present my travel documents and realizing I forgot them at the hotel, they kicked me off the train and sent me back!
