When I used to have a show on French TV, people would ask me how my jacket stayed spotless while cooking. Your whole area has to be clean - and you have to keep it that way.
I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.
Napoleon had been fighting this army of slaves and free people in Haiti and it depleted his forces. And after the Revolution, when the French were driven out, they stopped and sold this big chunk of North America to the Americans for very little mone...
The liberation movement which I led in Algeria, the organization that I created to fight the French army, was at first a small movement of nothing at all. We were but some tens of people throughout Algeria, a territory that is five times the size of ...
People say 'Why would you learn Dutch? Nobody speaks it. Why not French?' Even the Dutch say that to me! I say because I want to live here, I think it's only common courtesy that I speak the language.
I was born in Lebanon and emigrated to the U.S. and went back. I'd been raised in a French school in Beirut. Lebanon is a peculiar place, so bicultural it goes along with you. There is a Western influence, an Eastern influence. Most people are fluctu...
I would advocate that chocolate be covered by health insurance, but that is admittedly a very French public policy perspective.
On the morning after the daring theft of a priceless James Ensor painting from the Grand Palais in Paris, I was allowed to leave the Les Halles Police Station after only a few hours of questioning.
May you hear my feeble voice! It will tell you that here below there is a heart full of the memory of you.
I spent the period reading the first novel assigned for English. And wow. If I hadn't realized I was in France yet, I do now. Because Like Water for Chocolate has sex in it. LOTS of sex.
Men may be the head of the house, but the women are the neck, and they can turn the head any way they want.
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 it.
I went to a French immersion school, and French-Canadian improv is a big thing, and we had an improv team at school, and 12 of us would get up and make things up against other elementary schools. I'd always wanted to perform, and that was just anothe...
I started work on my first French history book in 1969; on 'Socialism in Provence' in 1974; and on the essays in Marxism and the French Left in 1978. Conversely, my first non-academic publication, a review in the 'TLS', did not come until the late 19...
The French are pretty thin-skinned. The few times I mentioned a French writer in 'City Boy,' the relatives would ring up in high dudgeon. I once wrote a mocking review of Marguerite Duras in the 'New York Review of Books,' and good friends of mine in...
I have defended the interests of France at the G8 in Washington; afterwards I was at Chicago to announce the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan; I have participated in two European summits, so I have fully respected the engagements I made t...
I think London, New York, Paris, Milan, any big city has its own fashion. I don't know why they make such a big thing of Paris. I think maybe it comes from French New Wave films portraying the French girl as very feminine.
[first lines] Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle: Merry Christmas. What's your name, little boy? Little Boy: Eric. Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle: Uh-huh, Eric. What do you want for Christmas Eric? Hmmm?
Rita: Believe it or not, I studied nineteenth-century French poetry. Phil: La fille que j'aimera Sera comme bon vin Qui se bonifiera Un peux chaques matin Rita: You speak French? Phil: Oui.
Francesca Mondino: [in French; subtitled] Emanuelle, did you enjoy "Lucky Kids"? Shosanna Dreyfus: [in French] I rather liked Lillian Harvey. Joseph Goebbels: [suddenly in German] Lillian Harvey! Never mention that name in my presence!
Abe: [Joe has been teaching himself French] Why the fuck French? Joe: I'm going to France. Abe: You should go to China. Joe: I'm going to France. Abe: I'm from the future. You should go to China.
