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...
In Paris, AIDS was dismissed as an American phobia until French people started dying; then everyone said, 'Well, you have to die some way or another.' If Americans were hysterical and pragmatic, the French were fatalistic: depressed but determined to...
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.
My mother likes what I cook, but doesn't think it's French. My wife is Puerto Rican and Cuban, so I eat rice and beans. We have a place in Mexico, but people think I'm the quintessential French chef.
[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.
I don't flatter myself with much dependence upon the present disposition of the Eastern Indians, who are many ways liable to be drawn into a rupture with us by the artifices of the French, their own weakness and the influence which the French Mission...
I know of no other place that is so fascinating yet so frustrating, so aware of the world and its own place within it but at the same time utterly insular. A country touched by nostalgia, with a past so great - so marked by brilliance and achievement...
Shakespeare's bitter play [Troilus and Cressida] is therefore a dramatization of a part of a translation into English of the French translation of a Latin imitation of an old French expansion of a Latin epitome of a Greek romance. (p. 55)
Now listen,' said George angrily, 'I’ve been in a newspaper office all evening and I know better than you what’s going on.' 'Nonsense. If there’s one place in the world where nobody knows what’s going on, it’s a newspaper office.
In this world . . . It's when: The French are chefs The British are police The Germans are engineers The Swiss are bankers And the Italians are lovers It's when: The English are chefs The Germans are police The French are engineers The Swiss are love...
He snuffles. Oh, no. He's not going to cry, is he? Because even though it's sweet when guys cry, I am so not prepared for this. Girl scouts didn't teach me what to do with emotionally unstable drunk boys.
He closes his eyes. Our lips brush lightly. "If you ask me to kiss you , I will," he says. His fingers stroke the inside of my wrists, and I burst into flames. "Kiss me," I say. He does.
Yes, St. Claire. I like you. But I can't say it aloud, because he's my friend. And friends don't let other friends make drunken declarations and expect them to act upon them the next day
The trail of lime trees outside our building is still a public loo. …where else are they supposed to go to the toilet in a city where public toilets are about as common as UFO sightings?” (pp.281-82)
I have always thought that in revolutions, especially democratic revolutions, madmen, not those so called by courtesy, but genuine madmen, have played a very considerable political part. One thing is certain, and that is that a condition of semi-madn...
...we are all sorry when loss comes for us. The test of our character comes not in how many tears we shed but in how we act after those tears have dried.
