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Quotes by French Authors
"There is the churning and the boiling of the sea, and the foam on top of it and that is what man is, churning and foam together."
"He fell as gently as a tree falls. There was not even any sound.."
"You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."
"Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved."
"In France they spend six months training policemen, then they give them a gun and put them on the streets, and I don't know that that's enough. The film's not against the police - although I think that if someone wants to be a cop there's got to be a problem."
"In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end."
"Swann could at once detect in this story one of those fragments of literal truth which liars, when taken by surprise, console themselves by introducing into the composition of the falsehood which they have to invent, thinking that it can be safely incorporated, and will lend the whole story an air of verisimilitude."
"For people to understand me when I travel, I speak with my hands."
"We see things in this material world, wherein our bodies dwell, only because our mind through its attention lives in another world, only because it contemplates the beauties of the archetypal and intelligible world which Reason contains."
"The media transforms the great silence of things into its opposite. Formerly constituting a secret, the real now talks constantly. News reports, information, statistics, and surveys are everywhere."
"This is, to me, the loveliest and saddest landscape in the world. It is the same as that on the preceding page, but I have drawn it again to impress it on your memory. It is here that the little prince appeared on Earth, and disappeared.Look at it carefully so that you will be sure to recognise it in case you travel some day to the African desert. And, if you should come upon this spot, please do not hurry on. Wait for a time, exactly under the star. Then, if a little man appears who laughs, who has golden hair and who refuses to answer questions, you will know who he is. If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me word that he has come back."
"I don't enjoy. I suffer from enjoying. It's very Christian."
"Let each produce according to his aptitudes and his force; let each consume according to his need."
"Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself."
"The adventure is which I have shared so passionately is not over--this adventure with its doubt, failure, the dreariness of no progress, then a glimpse of light, a hope, a hypothesis confirmed; and then after weeks and months of anxious perseverance, the intoxication of success."
"If you come at four in the afternoon, I'll begin to be happy by three."
"Naturally I drew register a little exaggerated, in order to create something new in the sense of a sublime literature that sings of despair only in order to oppress the reader, and make him desire the good as the remedy."
"In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations."
"When you see the films of certain young directors, you get the impression that film history begins for them around 1980."
"I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests."
"Our religion is itself profoundly sad - a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man's own language - so long as he knows anguish and is a painter."
"What's done at night belongs to the night. In the daytime you don't talk about it."
"I have departed from this planet and I have left behind my poor earthly ones with their occupations which are as many as they are useless; at last I am living in the scintillating splendor of the stars, each of which used to seem to me as large as millions of suns."
"For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment's human suffering."
"And there is a beautiful thing which is wonderful, to look like a woman, not a green bean."
"If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat."
"When I last went to Italy, over two years ago, I had a lot more trouble understanding the language than I used to when I lived there for a year. I used to speak very little but I could understand very well."
"Existence is illusory and it is eternal."
"Nothing makes me so happy as to observe nature and to paint what I see."
"Music is an art that expresses the inexpressible. It rises far above what words can mean or the intelligence define. Its domain is the imponderable and impalpable land of the unconscious."
"I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior."
"I explained to him, however, that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings."
"I would like to be able to breathe- to be able to love her by memory or fidelity. But my heart aches. I love you continuously, intensely."
"All the English speakers, or almost all, have difficulties with the gender of words."
"I didn't so much choose the film as director Claire Denis chose me."
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