French Quotations

When I was 14 years old, I was with my parents at a restaurant. Some people came in and said, 'Would you like to be a model?' I went to see them, and they said, 'You have to lose seven kilos.' I said, 'No, I want to eat French fries.'

I always try to slip healthy things by my kids. I give them sweet potato French fries and fake chicken nuggets.

In the Middle Ages, I think the French kings murdered slightly fewer of their family members than the English kings, though I haven't actually counted the heads.

Here in Russia,, in many cities, people are irritated by Caucasian intrusion. Caucasians come from foreign countries; they are ubiquitous: in markets, shops, hotels, restaurants. They misbehave, and in this sense we have feelings similar to those that the Germans have toward the Turks and the French toward Algerians.

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.

What would you do in order to marry Sophia Loren? I think anyone would become French to marry Sophia Loren. Love was more important than nationality. The cultural heritage of that country and my parents is so interlaced that it really doesn't matter that a piece of paper tells them they're French.

A month before the season I stop putting ketchup on my french fries.

I learned French in Tunis, along with Arabic. I also learned French history. I knew the entire history of the kings of France. And I was fascinated by Versailles.

Both Iraq and Syria are a fissile mixture of ethnicities and religions thrown together after Versailles by departing French and British imperialists and only kept together by Baathist tyranny and violence.

From the days of biplanes and silk scarves, the aviator has been the archetype of masculine glamour. Aviators have personified national ideals, from French elan to Soviet party discipline. They've inspired lust and admiration. They've turned sunglasses and short, utilitarian leather jackets into fashion statements.

It's true, I'm the youngest, highest-grossing French director. I have a few records, but no one knows or simply doesn't care. That's good, because I like that. Ultimately, I want to keep working, making a lot of movies, and get better at it. It's about finding great scripts and bringing them to life.

The people of Texas are rightly proud of their own, just like the French and the Italians, but visiting artists have often been given a shot in the history of art.

As the winter set in with its customary Canadian severity the real trouble of the French began. They did not suffer from the cold, but they were dying of scurvy.

The French Revolution actualised the Enlightenment's greatest intellectual breakthrough: detaching the political from the theocratic.

Sushi is something very exclusive. It is not like a McDonald's, not like a hot dog, not like a French fry. It's very high-class cooking in Japan.

A French Republican is a Republican who beats up on conservatives and is constantly praising the Democrats and contributing to the massive spending in this country while they go home and pretend otherwise.

I feel French is very close to Urdu. Both languages are beautiful. Sadly, their beauty is lost in translation.

Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, comes the word. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of fiction, the genes that generate everything else. Use the right words, and your fiction can blossom. The French have a phrase for it - le mot juste - the exact right word in the exact right position.

A lot of our animation projects are co-productions with French production companies.

I would pretend to be the French lieutenant's woman. I was always a romantic. I still am, actually.

I'm 50% Asian actually, so yes I was born in Paris but I feel more international than French so I can't talk about French women.

I have two much-beloved stovetop espresso pots at home, plus a couple French presses I couldn't resist buying because they were so pretty. If I had to imbibe at Starbucks, I'd want a mocha with an extra shot.

Albert Camus's 'La Peste' - 'The Plague' - had an enormous impact on me when I read it in high school French class, and I chose my senior yearbook quote from it. In college, I wrote a philosophy class paper on Camus and Sartre, and again chose my yearbook quote from 'La Peste.'

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.

The French are very bizarre. There is this collective depiction: 'We're in decline, we're being assailed, we must protect ourselves.'

Gradually I became aware of details: a company of French soldiers was marching through the streets of the town. They broke formation, and went in single file along the communication trench leading to the front line. Another group followed them.

The French were generous in giving us assistance in corps and army artillery, with its personnel, and we were confident from the start of our superiority over the enemy in guns of all calibers.

Not unless I do all these ancient and Italian or French or Baroque in the beginnning, I do German.

We had common interests in the beauty of the French language. We both had a tremendous love of jazz. We shared dreams of getting married and having a family, living in the country, leading an idyllic life.

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.

Readers want to have the confidence that you understand the era in which the book is set, so for 'The Perfumer's Secret,' I needed to know everything about the First World War from a French perspective. I had to understand those people and that town in 1914.

I'm not very into pastas or heavy foods like meat, but pastries, especially if they come from a really nice French bakery, I go crazy over! I try to allow myself those little treats in the morning for breakfast, then I have a lighter lunch.

I have often said that just as the French revolution, for instance, understood itself through antiquity, I think our time can be understood through the French revolution. It is quite a natural process to use other times to understand your own time.

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse.

I like junk food, French fries, hamburgers - I love it.

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 wish I were shyly, quietly intriguing, like Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, like someone French and fashionable who knows how to twirl her ladylike locks just so and walk adroitly on kitten heels, who is all gesture and whisper - but I am unfortunately forward and forthright: When I am interested in a man, he absolutely knows it.

When I started writing, the first thing that came out was in English. I liked a few French things, but they were very overwhelming.

I would like to spend more time with Spanish poetry. I know French better than Spanish, but Spanish was my first language, and my father spoke it to us.

In terms of foods for me, I think I have more of the usual associations - foods from childhood that I associate with care and love, from relatives or special restaurants like the kind elderly man who dusted seasoning salt on French fries at the corner burger joint.

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.

I have been obsessed with seamed stockings my whole life, and I would collect vintage ones that were made in the '40s and '50s with the authentic styling of the keyhole, the welt, the reinforced toe and heels, French or Cuban heels, and hand-stitched seams.

The bands you like and know that are French are always outsiders in the French music industry - Daft Punk, Air.

Europeans are forever the offspring of Machiavelli, trapped in a historical rollercoaster that can bring us a monarchy-toppling French Revolution and then a few years later Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor.

France loves American cinema because when an American remake is successful, it makes us money to produce more French films.

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.

Matisse was my God. I'm a French artist, that's for sure. I am color-oriented and what you might call a composer. I am not pouring my guts out; I keep them inside.

All my life, I have loved balloons - all balloons - the heavy English sort, immense and round, that have to be pushed about, and the gay, light, gas-filled French ones that soar into the air the moment you let go of them.

We have these weapons of mass destruction on every street corner, and they're called donuts, cheeseburgers, French fries, potato chips, junk food. Our kids are living on a junk food diet.

The French suffered such catastrophic losses in the First World War. It really was the end of them as a great world power, although they, quote, 'won.'

It was 1953, and I was still at school. I'd borrowed a silent French film from the library for my 9.5mm projector. It was by Jean Epstein, and it was awful. So I rang the library and asked if they had anything else. They said they had 'Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Revolution.'

I was as repelled by the French as I was attracted by their country.

The Arab spring was not as radical as the French or Iranian revolutions. It did not pull out the deeply entrenched roots of the state. Instead, it was satisfied to replace the top of the pyramid with newly elected, but inexperienced, leaders.

I went to Brown to be a French professor, and I didn't know what I was doing except that I loved French. When I got to Paris and I could speak French, I know how much it helped me to establish relationships with Karl Lagerfeld, with the late Yves St. Laurent. French, it just helps you if you're in fashion. The French people started style.

Historically, the French have had a romantic attachment to their bikes. Though the first functioning two-wheeler is thought to have been invented by a German in 1817, it was the French who popularized and marketed the device in the 1860s, giving it the name 'bicycle.'

I'd always been extremely fascinated by the French Nuit Blanche, which is a weekend that they have in Paris where they keep all the museums open until dawn. You can go and hang out in Versailles in the middle of the night and watch the sun come up.

China is not looking for a trade surplus but wants to import more French goods.

I like salty, creamy foods. I could sit down with a bag of chips and French onion dip and go to town! That would be on my last-supper list.

I saw the original that Gela Babluani wrote and directed called '13 Tzameti,' and that was very interesting. I believe it was a French film, and I was just intrigued by the awkwardness; the off-beatness of the film really just grasped me.

You know, I would like to ask to the other parts of Canada to respect the minority of the French Canadians.

This country must be governed, and can be governed, simply on questions of policy and administration and the French Canadians who have had any part in this movement have never had any other intention but to organise upon those party distinctions and upon no other.

German writers in the late 18th century were the first to uphold a prickly, literary nationalism, in reaction to the then dominance and prestige of French literature.

My dream is not Hollywood, but to perform my act in English to 30 people in a Soho comedy club, to show New Yorkers what they look like from the French point of view.

When I wrote about the French Revolution, I didn't choose to write about aristocrats; I chose characters who began their lives in provincial obscurity.

In fact I enjoyed every minute of my life at King's, especially the discovery of French and German literature.

I think Spain will always remain inspirational, and I think French cuisine will continue to be very French and yet very relevant with its time and keep evolving. But the last thing you want for it is to become too trendy and confusing. It has too much history.

I've learned from my French husband and the way they eat, it's all about moderation. And that's really sustainable.

Fledgling designers need investment - but how much easier it is to put them in a dead man or woman's shoes, perhaps also backing the new designer's namesake line, but only as what the French call a 'danseuse,' a plaything.

We used to be referred to as bakers and then we became known as cake decorators and now we are known as cake designers. I teach at the French Culinary Institute in New York and cake design is a legitimate profession.

Sauce is certainly ancestral to French cooking. The technique is very tricky, but it's also very fundamental.

High heels weren't always a girl thing. In the fifteen-hundreds, the riding shoes of French noblemen were fitted with raised heels so that their feet stayed put in the stirrups. Over the next few decades, heels inched higher on dress shoes, particularly among men of privilege.

The French have a very deep knowledge of Islam in many areas, and we can exchange views.

To achieve the very pinnacle of good taste, the neoclassicists wrote their plays entirely in alexandrine verse, a rarefied meter that is uniquely tailored to the French language and fits no other.

When African-Americans come to France, the French show them more consideration than they would show an African or a Black Caribbean. When African-Americans come to France, the French people are like, 'Oh, wow. Oh my God.' But if it's an African, they're like, 'Whatever.' It's all because of the past, because of our history.

My favourite film is 'Le Diner de Cons,' a French movie.

The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany.

First need in the reform of hospital management? That's easy! The death of all dietitians, and the resurrection of a French chef.

I can't think of this country without Quebec. Je parle francais. And when I think about being a Canadian, speaking French is part of it.

Great French design is often about unexpected touches.

I speak French fluently, so that really helped.

Well, let's say we acknowledged the School of French Painting - the Paris School of painting as the leading force and vitality of the time. I think that was understood and felt and experienced.

Hey, I used to eat at McDonald's: I liked the taste of the food, especially the French fries.

Machismo requires Latin blood. I'd say I never experienced machismo up close until I worked in a French office; the typical Wall Street gunner has the soul of a coffee filter in comparison.

I played French horn, and I certainly do miss it. I miss it. I wish I had the time to keep up with it. It's like exercising: You have to keep it up, especially the muscles in your lips to deal with the French horn.

People rich enough to redecorate every 10 months are certainly careless with antique furniture. I found four 1760 French side chairs, tapestry seats intact. Claiming them proved easier than persuading any cabdriver to transport the things.

Usually, jet lag is not this big of an issue for me. I'm not sure why I'm so disoriented this time. It could be due to the amount of chocolate and french fries I've eaten in the last two and a half weeks.

And I think you understand a little bit more why she falls for him. In a way, watching the French do anything is a little more fun because their gestures are different. And in that way, they make everything interesting.

I write in the most classical French because this form is necessary for my novels: to translate the murky, floating, unsettling atmosphere I wanted them to have, I had to discipline it into the clearest, most traditional language possible.

Sunday's my day off, where I eat whatever I want. I don't not let myself have something. I do love French fries and bread.

I was born in Paris, and my mother was a French teacher, but then I rebelled against my upbringing and studied Spanish in school. So now I just speak bad French and bad Spanish.

There is a bright spot or two for the Spaniards. French toast has become freedom toast on the Air Force One breakfast menu, but the Spanish omelet is still a Spanish omelet.

I've heard though that there is a younger generation of tonal French composers who are reacting with vigour.

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.

Cannes is a little bit like French wine. There are certain years that people prefer over others.

My style is cinematic; it is a touch of French woman of the '60s and American hippie with a Brooklyn edge. I love wearing wide-brim hats, newsboy caps, mini dresses and sheer blouses with details.

I went to L'Academie de Cuisine in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and I think French cooking is the basis for a lot of classical cuisine, a foundation of a lot of other cuisines. That said, it's not the only way to approach a cooking career.

When we played Paris, the English punks would come over, and they got to know the French punks. There was some nice scenes in the back alleys.

When I was about 12 or 13, my father gave me 'The Little Prince.' He was making sure that I knew it was a special book. I'd seen the name of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, but to me it seemed a very French name, and I was not excited about him as a person.

I see by your letter to my father that you are rather afraid the French may invade England.

As the French say, there are three sexes - men, women, and clergymen.