Quotes About France

I woke up one time coming out of a blackout, and I was on an airplane, descending to land in Charles de Gaulle Airport in France. And all I can think is I must have decided it was a good idea to go to France, and got my passport, and got on a plane.

What I think I'm perceived as in France is, like, I'm this leading man always doing strange movies because most of the movies I did, like 'Irreversible' or 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' and a bunch of others, and even in France, they always come out as a particular movie, not like the typical French kind of movies that people know most of the time.

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.

In France, a first lady has no status, and therefore she isn't supposed to do anything else.

You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe.

Napoleon the Third was not much. He died in England, and was buried in a country church-yard much the same as Kiltartan. But Napoleon the First was a great man; it was given out of him there never would be so great a man again.

Kristin Scott Thomas is terrific. She has a career in France and a career in England: how cool is that? I wouldn't mind that.

Obviously, growing up in France, I had foie gras probably when I was two years old. Writing about it and understanding what's going on in the world about it, I think I became more conscious and more thoughtful about things, for sure.

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.

Certainly they would have planted more grapes, produced more wine, lowered the price of wine. They would have needed more casks, more boats, more settlers. America might be France today. The King was encouraging settlements, to hold America for France. He was taking every care of the settlers. Still, there are two facts: They planted no more grapes. The settlements grew very slowly.

I thought they were unemployed. They did not appear as unemployed on any record, but the actual unemployment in France and throughout Europe, was enormous. For every purchase in a French department store, something like an hour's time was unemployed; millions of hours a day. And the cashiers, the filing clerks, the watchers of those records, never did a stroke of productive work.

burgundy-by-bike.com

In the first days of mobilization there was of course a lot of enthusiasm," recalled Robert Poustis, who was a French student at the time.

The Algerians were revolutionsists, they wanted land. France offered to let them be integrated into France. They told France, to hell with Fance, they wanted some land, not some France.

Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil, for evil takes a break from time to time, stupidity does not.

Bordeaux are named after châteaux. Castles.

In a low voice, I told her many things in English, only using French when for some reason I couldn't find the word I wanted, rambling on about the France of my time, and the crude little colony of New Orleans where I had existed after, and how wondrous this age was, and how I'd become a rock star for a brief time, because I thought that as a symbol of evil I'd do some good.

In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said It is the trade entering his body.

Only after a writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature. In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said, It is the trade entering his body. The art must enter the body, too.

My father's reaction surprised me. Vietnam had made him vehemently antiwar, so I expected him to applaud my decision, but instead he told me that American soldiers had saved the world from fascism during World War II and that thousands of young Americans were buried in his homeland of France. "You don't owe your country nothing," I remember him telling me. "You owe it something, and depending on what happens, you might owe it your life.

My mother is an actress and very well known in France; hence, I move to London to start my own life.

In France, anyone can use your music on like a TV show or whatever - they don't need to ask permission. It's almost like a child when it has its own life.

It is Remembrance Day. A time to conjure up the mighty fallen. Friends and relatives rotting in the channel and mud of France. But the old man won't remember quite yet. Not till he's had his breakfast and read the paper. Then he will let the memories come back. Relive the good old days.

He [Clemenceau] had one illusion - France; and one disillusion - mankind.