#french

You'll be so busy with Bridge and what's-his-name that you'll forget all about your English mate, St. Clair." "Ha! So you are English!" I poke him in the stomach. He grabs my hand and we wrestle, laughing. "I claim... no... nationality. ↗

— Stephanie Perkins

#anna-and-the-french-kiss #étienne-st-clair #business

There is only one cure for grey hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine. ↗

— P.G. Wodehouse

#grey-hair #guillotine #humor #old-age #age

Je ne peux être juste pour les livres qui traitent de la femme en tant que femme... Mon idée c'est que tous, aussi bien hommes que femmes, qui que nous sayons, nous devons être considérés comme d'êtres humaines. ↗

— Dorothy Parker

#french #gender-equality #equality

The French are like a coin with a different face on either side of it (every coin has two faces), for every action there is an equally strong opposing idea that vibrates on the other end within them like the receiving side of a series of ripples in a pond. But this is all happening within themselves. The French are exactly like their own language: there are too many letters but then you're not supposed to pronounce them! ↗

— C. JoyBell C.

#equality

The supposedly eyewitness authority of the Pseudo-Turpin finds a parallel in another genre in which vernacular prose was pioneered: that of the historical memoir. There were twelfth-century verse histories narrated by authors who had personally participated in the events they describe, such as the Third Crusade. But the Fourth Crusade of 1202-4 saw a switch to prose. This shameful fiasco, in which the crusaders were induced to turn aside from the Holy Land and attack instead the Christian city of Constantinople, inspired two contrasting accounts. Robert de Clari--ignorant of higher-level strategy, but all agog at the splendours of Constantinople--gives a worm's eye view. Geoffroi de Villehardouin, by contrast, has a top diplomat's suave authority and a leader's eye for the aesthetics of war--the splendid sight of a fleet, or the noble heroism of a ruler. For both authors the medium of prose seems to convey the purported authenticity and transparency of lived experience. ↗

— Sarah Cay Terence Cave Malcolm Bowie

#prose-versus-verse #experience

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

— Lawrence Durrell

#knife #uncut #love

So it was perfectly possible that there were men who liked shopping, men who understood exactly what it was all about, but Mma Ramotwe had yet to meet such a man. Maybe they existed elsewhere - in France, perhaps - but they did not seem to be much in evidence in Botswana. ↗

— Alexander McCall Smith

#humour #mma-ramotswe #men

ALPHA-60: Your name is written "Ivan Johnson," but it is pronounced "Lemmy Caution," Secret Agent Zero Zero Three of the Outlands. You are a threat to the security of Alphaville. CAUTION: I refuse to become what you call "normal." ... ALPHA-60: You cannot escape. The door is locked. CAUTION: Try to stop me, pal. ↗

— Jean-Luc Godard

#french-cinema #french-film #french-new-wave #movie-quote #movies

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 as a sign that I ought to do it. ↗

— André Gide

#nature

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 of Chaucerian, Shakespearean, Miltonic, Johnsonian, Dickensian and American. Military, naval, legal, corporate, criminal, jazz, rap and ghetto discourses are mingled at every turn. The French language, like Paris, has attempted, through its Academy, to retain its purity, to fight the advancing tides of Franglais and international prefabrication. English, by comparison, is a shameless whore. ↗

— Stephen Fry

#french #humour #language #london #paris