I’ve done an awful lot of skiing all over Europe: I’ve done Italy, Austria, France. I skied loads in New Zealand – I did pretty much every ski slope I could find.

There’s nowhere that life feels more eternal, your dimwit youth more important, than Paris.

Don’t wanna ever take your shoes off in coconut land. Never know when you’re gonna have to run.

It was like the first time I visited Versailles. There was an eerieness, like I’d been there before. I don’t know if I was Louis XIV or Marie Antoinette or a lowly groundskeeper, but I...

It is at a time like this, when crisis threatens the stomach, that the French display the most sympathetic side of their nature. Tell them stories of physical injury or financial ruin and they will...

Ha!” cried Dr John contemptuously. “Magic! That is chiefly used for killing Frenchmen, is it not?

You go to Holland, France, Germany, every community, the tiniest village, they have magnificent, pristine sports facilities.

I was praised in the U.S. and heavily, brutally criticized in France.

How can you be kissing at a time like this? Have you no respect for the dead?

En France, que de gens à longues oreilles : nes en littérature, lièvres en politique !

Hitler was the archetype of the abstemious man. When the other krauts saw him drink water in the Beer Hall they should have known he was not to be trusted.

The lives of thousands of young Frenchmen were ready for this literary bath of blood and sentiment in the 1830’s. Their fathers and grandfathers had had their romanticism in the raw: the drama of the...

Foreigners don’t want to invest any more in France – and this is not working.

Humans are curious creatures. What we cannot see, our logical minds will try to deny.

…it has always been my temperament to prefer a tiny amount of the excellent to a plenitude of the mediocre…

This medical view of an ideal male who was insulated from pathogens was inextricably bound up with a parallel discourse about the maintenance of strong ego boundaries, a psychic investment in one’s bodily peripheries that...

This is what you British do not understand about the French. You think you must work, work, work, work and open on Sundays and make mothers and fathers with families slave in supermarkets at three...

In 1902, Marcellin P. Berthelot, often called the founder of modern organic chemistry, was one of France’s most celebrated scientists—if not the world’s. He was permanent secretary of the French Academy, having succeeded the giant...

A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon—a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity—and gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where...

Tous les chagrins sont méprisants, imprenables, perchés à des hauteurs que personne ne peux rejoindre. Peut-être a-t-on trop peur qu’une consolation efface ce qu’il reste des souvenirs.

Of course, my Christmas is (so much more) gorgeous and romantic (than Germany’s)!! And unlike the rest of the world, we leave wine behind for Santa Claus!””So Santa-san is delivering gifts to children while driving...

If I walked down by different streets to the Jardin du Luxembourg in the afternoon I could walk through the gardens and then go to the Musée du Luxembourg where the great paintings were that...

And I had just kissed my ex-girlfriend, who had cried, while my current girlfriend was in jail. So far, it had not been my best day.

Je parle français.” Indira gave me a weird look. Or a look that said I was weird. Whichever. The point is, I don’t really speak French, but it’s a useful phrase for confusing people you...

With heart at rest I climbed the citadel’sSteep height, and saw the city as from a tower,Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells,Where evil comes up softly like a flower.Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my...

…all the men in the photograph wear puttees. All the men in the picture are bound, trying to keep themselves together. That is how considerate they are, for the love of God and country and...

A country like France now does two-thirds of its trade within the euro zone.

For with all that is grand, grander is the expansion of the mind.

Don’t push me, I’m hormonal.”I’m not really a lousy detective, just rough around the edges.

In France they don’t think I’m difficult.

Gay-Lussac was quick, lively, ingenious and profound, with great activity of mind and great facility of manipulation. I should place him at the head of all the living chemists in France.

They have a very low rate for attempted murder and a high rate for successfully concluded murder. It seems that when a French person sets out to kill someone, they make a good job of...

Veni, vidi, vici. That was easy for Julius Caesar to say; he crossed Italy in a chariot, not on a stupid bike.” – Vivia

Elle voulait autre chose. Des mains qui se touchent sans rien donner.

As every circumstance relating to so capital a discovery as this (the greatest, perhaps, that has been made in the whole compass of philosophy, since the time of Sir Isaac Newton) cannot but give pleasure...

My wife and I had called on Miss Stein, and she and the friend who lived with her had been very cordial and friendly and we had loved the big studio with the great paintings....

Never run upstairs when someone’s chasing you. Don’t try to quick-draw a man who already has his gun out. Never light a match in the dark in a strange building. Half of staying safe is...

If you ask the great city, ‘Who is this person?,’ she will answer, ‘He is my child.

Paris n’est pas une ville, c’est un pays.

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.

Like the magnolia tree, She bends with the wind,Trials and tribulation may weather her, Yet, after the storm her beauty blooms, See her standing there, like steel, With her roots forever buried,Deep in her Southern...

A breath of laughter will blow a Government out of existence in Paris much more effectually than a whiff of cannon-smoke

I regard anti-Semitism as ineradicable and as one element of the toxin with which religion has infected us. Perhaps partly for this reason, I have never been able to see Zionism as a cure for...

do not look on me with those dear, scared eyes of yours. If there is aught that puzzles you in what I said, try and trust me a little longer. Remember, I must save the...

It was then I thought of Corsica, the place we had discovered together. I craved the wind, the sun and salt, the simplicity of the island.

The Comtesse’s fellow prisoners in this antechamber to death were characteristic of the ill-assorted gatherings thrown together in Revolutionary prisons: duchesses and prostitutes, actresses and politicians: the Duchesse de Crequy-Montmorency and Madame Roland; Madame du...

Above all, let’s hope we never take ourselves too seriously.

You know, sometimes I don’t understand what’s wrong with us. This is just about the most creative and imaginative country on earth—and yet sometimes we just don’t seem to have the gumption to exploit our...

I wore only black socks, because I had heard that white ones were the classic sign of the American tourist. Black ones though,- those’ll fool ’em. I supposed I hoped the European locals’ conversation would...

Ils jetteront la France dans de terribles aventures, la bouleverseront légalement, la ruineront légalement. […] Cette débauche du socialisme imbécile et sanguinaire (voir les deux Guerres mondiales…) finira par allumer un incendie, qui sera pour...