(…) il fallait séparer nos souffles, s’écarter, s’espacer, se lever, se dédoubler, et c’est toujours autant de perdu. Quand on a deux corps, il vient des moments où l’on est à moitié.- Est-ce que je...

Before a shoot, I’ll watch what I eat. During the shoot, I watch what I eat. Afterwards, the first thing I do is go have a steak and French fries.

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...

Le désir était un crime de la pensée.

It was not the way Curve smelled that Colin liked – not exactly. It was the way the air smelled just as Lindsey began to jog away from him. The smell of perfume left behind....

celebration.

I often asked Laplace what he thought of God. He owned that he was an atheist.

We have been expropriated from our own language by television, from our songs by reality TV contests, from our flesh by mass pornography, from our city by the police and from our friends by wage-labor.

Ce n’était pas une vie; on existait, et c’est tout.

They establish distinctions and reserves which I cannot apply to myself, for I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take...

Irene gasped. “Have you taken leave of your senses, Stuart?” she hissed. “Have you?”Stuart closed his eyes.”No,” he said. “Au contraire.” It was strong language for the Edinburgh New Town, but he had to say...

What’s the trick to remembering that a sandwich is masculine? What qualities does it share with anyone in possession of a penis? I’ll tell myself that a sandwich is masculine because if left alone for...

My lord said, amongst other things, that he did not propose to burden the doctor with the details of his genealogy. He consigned the doctor and all his works, severally and comprehensively described, to hell,...

Je t’aime tant, je ne peux pas trouver la fin de mon amour pour toi(I love you so thar I can’t find the end of my love for you)

La véritable évolution n’est-elle pas intérieure?C’est en se changeant soi-même que l’on devient heureux, pas en changeant ce qui nous entoure.

Le bonheur dure une seconde. Lorsque l’on se réveille, à l’aube, il y a ne moment agréable, juste avant que la conscience se souvienne et que le coeur se serre.

PISTOL-Say’st thou me so? is that a ton of moys? Come hither, boy: ask me this slave in French What is his name.Boy-Ecoutez: comment etes-vous appele?French Soldier-Monsieur le Fer.Boy- He says his name is Master...

Tu seras toujours mon ami. Tu auras envie de rire avec moi.

Kilmartin wrote a highly amusing and illuminating account of his experience as a Proust revisionist, which appeared in the first issue of Ben Sonnenberg’s quarterly Grand Street in the autumn of 1981. The essay opened...

If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn’t be worth living.

Détaché de ses amarres, son cœur flottait à la dérive dans la ciel.

He was thirty-six years old, and six foot three. He spoke English to people and French to cats, and Latin to the birds. He had once nearly killed himself trying to read and ride a...

I love the French edition with its uncut pages. I would not want a reader too lazy to use a knife on me.

yes,” and only recently did I learn it’s spelled o-​u-​i and not w-​e-​e.

– Tonton Gabriel, dit Zazie paisiblement, tu m’as pas encore espliqué si tu étais un hormosessuel ou pas, primo, et deuzio où t’avais été pêcher toutes les belles choses en langue forestière que tu dégoisais...

I wonder why I ever bothered with sex, he thought; there’s nothing in this breathing world so gratifying as an artfully placed semicolon.

Je t’inventeraiDes mots insensésQue tu comprendrasJe te parleraiDe ces amants-làQui ont vue deux foisLeurs coeurs s’embraserJe te raconteraiL’histoire de ce roiMort de n’avoir pasPu te rencontrerNe me quitte pasNe me quitte pasNe me quitte pas

Etre pauvre à Paris, c’est être pauvre deux fois.

I’m all self-taught. I never had a teacher. Even for English, and French, and German, I hardly went to school.

Give us being and feeling over having any day.

I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.

The physical shape of Mollies paralyses and contortions fit the pattern of late-nineteenth-century hysteria as well — in particular the phases of “grand hysteria” described by Jean-Martin Charcot, a French physician who became world-famous in...

La tenancière m’offrit une assiettée d’amandes grillées et me promit sa meilleure fille pourfêter ma majorité.– Sans rancune, petit?– Sans rancune, madame.– Comme c’est touchant… Et puis, arrête de me broder avec tes « madame...

ma chère penchons sur les filons géologiques (my dear let us lean on geographical veins)

In your opinion, where do private and political life, personal history and History meet? You know the answer, Maya. You say it unhesitatingly – in art and literature.

stressed out”.

Annoyance has made me bilingual.

Quoi qu’il arrive, n’en faites pas une affaire personnelle, parce qu’en prenant les choses personnellement vous vous programmez à souffrir pour rien.

Celui qui veut gravir la montagne ne doit pas se laisser impressionner par sa hauteur.

The French always make our sort happy because, like us, they know how to love, they’re just as good at playing the accordion, and they’ve made a real art of their inability to bake proper...

Tu peux marcher sur mon cœur car mon cœur est à tes pieds.

The scent of him was subtle, beautifully fresh, and she couldn’t think clearly. No man had ever brought out these intense feelings in her. Chris Augustine was dangerous and she could get lost in his...

Language is the source of misunderstandings.

When Hitler marched across the RhineTo take the land of France,La dame de fer decided,‘Let’s make the tyrant dance.’Let him take the land and city,The hills and every flower,One thing he will never have,The elegant...

Just as Marx used to say about the French “Marxists” of the late seventies: “All I know is that I am not a Marxist

Comment, Mademoiselle? Vous appellés cela betrügen? Corriger la fortune, l’enchainer sous ses doits, etre sûr de son fait, das nenn die Deutsch betrügen? betrügen! O, was ist die deutsch Sprak für ein arm Sprak! für...

Temperee, riante, (comme le sont celles d’automne dans la tres gracieuse ville de Buenos Aires) resplendissait la matinee de ce 28 avril: dix heures venait de sonner aux horloges et, a cet instant, eveillee, gesticulant...

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

Tant qu’il existera, par le fait des lois et des mœurs, une damnation sociale créant artificiellement, en pleine civilisation, des enfers, et compliquant d’une fatalité humaine la destinée qui est divine; tant que les trois...

Mais Turandot sort brusquement de son bistrot et, du bas des marches, il lui crie : “Eh petite, où vas-tu comme ça ?” Zazie ne lui rèpond pas, elle se contente d’allonger le pas.