I don’t know a writer who doesn’t feel some sense of glamour and magic and a complex, wistful sadness emanating from the expats of the twenties in France. Some of the sadness, of course, is that we weren’t there.
I loved France, although I initially thought they were stubborn for always speaking French.
As a graduate student at Oxford in 1963, I began writing about books in revolutionary France, helping to found the discipline of book history. I was in my academic corner writing about Enlightenment ideals when the Internet exploded the world of academic communication in the 1990s.
I don’t really consider myself an immigrant, because I was born French; I have always spoken the language. I never had the feeling of being a foreigner. I was very lucky: I came to France, and I had enough money to study and to rent a studio. So, for me, it was not difficult.
Here in France, what we love is Life. And all the pleasures that go with it.
I think kids in France, and certainly in my household, don’t necessarily stop interrupting when you tell them, but they gradually become more aware of other people, and that means that you can have the expectation of finishing a conversation.
I went from 198 pounds to 109 while I was in prison in France, and I had to tie my clothes on with rope.
Like the Devil, the Norway lobster is known by a variety of different names: cigala in Spain, langoustine in France, Dublin Bay Prawn in Ireland. And in Italy, as well as the U.K., scampi.
In France, everyone speaks French ’cause they think it’s cool. Gives ’em, gives ’em an excuse to smoke.
Nothing is impossible. Lassana Diarra did not play for France for five years and then returned.
In France, the people were the sport of a king’s caprice. Everywhere was the shadow of the Bastille. It fell upon the sunniest field, upon the happiest home.
My grandma is kind of a rock star. She goes to France and all over.
I spent a lot of time in a small town in France, growing up.
I don’t want to return to France; France doesn’t tempt me at all. I like England.
In France one must adapt oneself to the fragrance of a urinal.
Actually, today I had to defend the Bush Administration in France again. They refuse to accept, because of their political ideology, that he has actually done more than any American President for Africa. But it’s empirically so.
Up to 1870, it was equally said of France and of Italy that they possessed no folk-tales. Yet, within fifteen years from that date, over 1000 tales had been collected in each country.
I had been living with my family in France as COVID was starting to spiral out of control in Europe. I said to my wife that maybe they should come back to the States with me because I was worried about getting separated.
Extensive analysis was conducted before deciding whether consumers would respond better to a male or female imprisoned in their phone. Almost every country in the world had a female Siri programmed – but not, initially, in the UK and France.
Francois Hollande is an intelligent man. I do not have a problem with him. The only thing is, he has never held office at the state level. Honestly, can you imagine Francois Hollande as president of France? Imagine it!
My son loves the Hotel du Cap, in the south of France.
I’ve published a couple of short novels in France that I didn’t want to publish in English because I loved the characters too much to subject them to American critics who were not exactly favorable toward my work.
I use a retouching varnish which is made in France, Libert, and that’s all the varnish I use.
The people have spoken. Their decision is sovereign. We all respect it… I wish good luck to those who will now govern France.
I have memories of watching the Champions League as a kid in France. We all supported different teams and they were intense moments. Great memories.
Workers of France, it is for the freedom of the prisoners that you will go to work in Germany! It is for our country that you will go in large numbers!
In France, I am the fifth artisan to produce his own chocolate, and the others have been doing it for a long time.
Usually in France we prefer to say bad things about the Nouvelle Vague, but I’m always impressed with its freedom and the fact of not making a film to give your opinion but just as a piece of art, which to me means the Nouvelle Vague.
I had two family members involved in World War I: two great-uncles. One of them is on a memorial in France. And the other was a trench runner who survived the war. The average life span of a trench runner was 36 hours, but he survived the whole war.
When I played for the first time against France, I wanted more.
When I heard Edward Snowden’s story, it reminded me of my mother in a strange way. She was in the French resistance from early on, 1941. At that time, the Resistance were considered troublemakers – even traitors – in France.
In 2003, the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and a year later, a national ethics committee in France, said that face transplantation would be going too far. The risk of complication would far outweigh the benefits.
My wife and I have spent most of our lives in France, and we are both pretty well bilingual, my wife more purely than I, since as a little girl she went to school in French Switzerland.
I have recently started acting lessons in south France, and I intend to commence acting lessons at Rada.
But as the Pope has a long arm, which might reach me in France, I have gone a little out of the way to tell him the plain truths contained in these pages.
Now since France has three times in sixty years failed to obtain practical results from Political revolutions, all Europe is apt to press forward into new Social doctrine to regulate the future.
Acting is our job, not talking about it. In France, they know me like I belong to their family. I go somewhere and I feel like I’m sometimes the aunt, the grandmother, the mother, the sister. They all know me. But it’s not supposed to be that way.
What is very interesting when talking about electronic music is that – I would say that rock and roll is called the ethnic music born in America that invaded the world. Electronic music is certainly kind of ethnic music born in countries like Germany and France that has invaded the world.
We back Hinkley Point project. It’s very important for France; it’s very important for the nuclear sector and EDF.
Americans don’t like puns and plays on words, which is totally opposite in the comedy world to France or even Italy and Germany.
I might have had trouble saving France in 1946 – I didn’t have television then.
Heads of France lead from a palace, and traditionally they retire to a cloud.
I don’t live in France; I live in myself.
Only in a popular war against France… do I see a misfortune.
I’ve been to Paris France and I’ve been to Paris Paramount. Paris Paramount is better.
In the south of France the phones cut in and out, the electricity isn’t particularly reliable. I think many people would get very irritated with that life.
Tyrrells crisps are one of the top sellers in France. I don’t know if you’ve tasted crisps in other countries, but I really think British crisps are world leaders. I went to China and they told me there is only one type of potato available there.
The funny thing in France is that writers are not allowed to retire, because the French government say you are still earning money from books you wrote 20 years ago.
I’ve got fans and letters from Israel, France Germany, Sweden, London, Africa. They all saying pretty much the same thing, ‘Yo, we love you, we need you, put some more music out, please!’
In America, people know there are always 10 people better than them who are after their job. In France, they know that too – but no one is going to get their job till they go to their grave.
The relationship between France and its ‘foreign’ players – blacks and North African Arabs – has always been troubled, particularly with Algerians.
As a mother, the things that I wanted for my own four children, I want for all the children of France.
There is no reason why the Louvre should be your favourite gallery just because it has the grandest collections in France, any more than Kew should necessarily be a favourite garden because it has the largest assemblage of plants, or Tesco your chosen shop because it has the widest variety of canned beans.
Power is the main difference; it’s more powerful in England. Referees are less strict than in France, teams like to play low and in counter-attack, and defenders in general are stronger than in France.
Even though I studied in New York and I know the American system, I come from France where I learned that with movies in France where the director is king. There’s no such thing as a studio edit. It’s the director’s cut, period.
I would love to live in India or in the South of France, but Roger Vivier doesn’t have offices yet in New Delhi or Jaipur.
‘Chocolat’ was a sort of statement of my own childhood, recognizing I experienced something from the end of the colonial era and the beginning of independence as I was a child that really made me aware of things I never forgot – a sort of childhood that made me different when I was a student in France.
