Quotes from Colette

You can be certain that long patience, and griefs jealously hidden have tempered and sharpened and toughened this woman till everyone cries 'She's made of steel!' No, she is merely made of woman.

If you succeed as I did, in sublimating the sexual drive and putting it in the service of heaven knows what mortifying joy or egalitarian madness, you will see the furious flower of jealousy stripped of its thorns, along with the condign egotism of the human couple.

Can one exist on lukewarmness?

The word "pure" has never revealed an intelligible meaning to me. I can only use the word to quench an optical thirst for purity in the transparencies that evoke it – in bubbles, in a volume of water, and in the imaginary latitudes entrenched, beyond reach, at the very center of a dense crystal.

He sipped his orangeade thoughtfully through a straw, and as my eyes rested on his fine mouth, I reflected that there was something about it that aroused ideas of sweetness, of sleep, something secret and gentle and sad – and still youthful. And I remembered the adage: "A kissed mouth never grows old.

These leisurely conversations always revealed their worship of the same twin deities - love and money, and would drift away from money and love to come back to Chéri and his deplorable upbringing, to his exceptional good looks ("harmless, after all," as Léa would say) and to his character ("virtually non-existent," as Léa would say). They had a taste for sharing confidences, and a dislike of new words or ideas, which they satisfied in these long talks.

TOBY-CHIEN : Qu'est-ce que tu fais aujourd'hui ? KIKI-LA-DOUCETTE : Mais...rien TOBY-CHIEN ironique : Pour changer. KIKI-LA-DOUCETTE : Pardon, pour ne pas changer. Quelle est cette rage de changement qui vous possède tous ? Changer, c'est détruire. Il n'y a d'éternel que ce qui ne bouge pas. TOBY-CHIEN : Voilà déjà bien trois heures que je suis éternel.

There is no premature death for a man utterly dedicated to conquest, solitude and vain flight: he is always at an age to die