Admirable, however, as the Paris of the present day appears to you, build up and put together again in imagination the Paris of the fifteenth century; look at the light through that surprising host of...

Paris’s neighborhoods, the arrondissements, are organized like a twist. They spiral from the river like toilet water flushing in reverse and erupting out of the bowl – a corkscrew or what have you, a flattened...

Me dieron ganas de cogerle la mano o el brazo mientras él miraba toda esa belleza babeando, como un pobre chucho flaco ante un hueso súper jugoso pero fuera de su alcance, y decirle bajito:Volveremos…...

Paris is the only city in the world where starving to death is still considered an art.

At Ungaro, I discovered the flou and the language of Paris.

Well,’ I said, ‘Paris is old, is many centuries. You feel, in Paris, all the time gone by. That isn’t what you feel in New York — ’He was smiling. I stopped.‘What do you feel...

I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and...

Paradoxically, the freedom of Paris is associated with a persistent belief that nothing ever changes. Paris, they say, is the city that changes least. After an absence of twenty or thirty years, one still recognizes...

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.

Maybe I shouldn’t scare off my date so quickly by shooting guns and telling stories about vomit, but, hey, the sooner he knows the real me, the better.

The directness of her question throws me. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think there are only so many opportunities…to get together with someone. And we’ve both screwed up so many times”- my voice grows quiet...

The veneer of civilization fell away to reveal desperate animals, humanity at their worst.

Fairy tales only happen in movies.” -George Meliesfrom The Invention of Hugo Cabret

I’ve always had a thing for men with large hadron colliders.

If you pick the place, I’ll pick the date.” She wants Paris, and I want March 5th 2082.

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...

The people that I liked and had not met went to the big cafes because they were lost in them and no one noticed them and they could be alone in them and be together.

bohemian Paris,” where French artists had gathered and cabaret songs had filled the air. In its heyday, Montmartre was one of the centers of popular entertainment, and its artists prided themselves on flying in the...

I know so much is going to happen here, but I just don’t know how. It feels like Paris is full of so many adventures just waiting to be had.

He was high up now, gazing across to where Montmartre itself gazed out over the city. He was swept along in the wind, admiring the twin steeples of Notre-Dame as he passed, along with the...

Paris and Fashion. Books and Art. What would one be … without the other?

The Frenchman showed her a great deal of Paris that day, saying over lunch at a café that it was impossible to see everything of interest in so short a time. “And of course the...

I didn’t choose Paris. I like to think that the city chose me.

She was ready to be a fugitive with him for the rest of her life – ‘Whither thou goest, I will go; thy people shall be my people’ – and when a Parisienne is ready...

I’ll keep you here.’ He taps his temple. ‘Where you can’t get lost.

The late 1920s were an age of islands, real and metaphorical. They were an age when Americans by thousands and tens of thousands were scheming to take the next boat for the South Seas or...

Happiness was useless to me. It was heartache that filled my purse. What happy man has need of Shakespeare?

I had walked over to the window and was looking down at the rails of the Montmartre funicular, the gardens of the Sacré Cœur and, further off, the whole of Paris, with its lights, its...

To breathe Paris is to preserve one’s soul.

By and large, the Mexican food in Paris is horrible.

He was a Parisian,’ he said. ‘You can never be sure what Parisians believe in – beyond Paris of course.

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...

My Illusionist, will you take me into a world filled with timeless magic?

To sit indoors was silly. I postponed the search for Savchenko and Ludmila till the next day and went wandering about Paris. The men wore bowlers, the women huge hats with feathers. On the café...

Whenever my mum gets depressed about her age, she goes to Paris.

I know the fate you endured might one day be my own. But I refuse to be a prisoner for the rest of my life.

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...

Piano Man put up a fight but his resistance was futile. Hell hath no fury like a drunken girl at her bachelorette party in the mood to sing.

They left me. My parents actually left me! IN FRANCE!

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.

I love Paris in the summer, when it sizzles.

I’m not in the City of Love, but I am in love. That’s why I look like I’m crazy, because being crazy is a prerequisite to being in love.

Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air;And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair;And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome;But when it...

The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one the poverty is hard on.

I look to the right as I cross the bridge and smile to see the tip of the Eiffel Tower soaring over rooftops in the distance on the other side of the river. I’ve seen...

In the City of Light, the stars are blind. Our constellations do not reside in the skies.

[H]e could see the island of Manhattan off to the left. The towers were jammed together so tightly, he could feel the mass and stupendous weight.Just think of the millions, from all over the globe,...

The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful...

Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.

The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi.