French Quotes

I like photographing the people I love, the people I admire, the famous, and especially the infamous. My last infamous subject was the extreme right wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.

I don't think it's a low point being in the finals of the French Open, three points away from the victory.

Children don't just play any more - they're far too busy learning to fence and taking extra French classes. In the end, you're actually doing more damage to your children by trying to hot-house them. It's far better to remain a calm parent.

The French were mystified about the Watergate scandal.

French design hardly exists, except as artificial modernism.

Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French... and they got together and swore a pact to the devil.

To put the point sharply: If an informer in the French underground who sent a friend to the torture chambers of the Gestapo was equally a victim, then there can be no right or wrong in life that I understand.

One bites into the brass mouthpiece of his wooden cudgel, and the other blows his cheeks out on a French horn. Do you call that Art?

I've played American, Italian, Greek, French. I've been really lucky that way.

I spoke French a bit, and I could speak a bit of this and that, and when you were taught those things by people who couldn't really do it, you can do some pretty wonderfully, imaginative horrific things to teachers.

In a country like France, so ancient, their history is full of outstanding people, so they carry a heavy weight on their back. Who could write in French after Proust or Flaubert?

There are so many people in the world who cannot read English or French or whatever.

My way of remaining French was the financing scheme I used for Quest for Fire, with Fox funds, since it started as a 100% American production. The film was not in French and yet was French in style, reflecting my personality.

I speak French fluently, so that really helped.

While Haiti has recently celebrated more than 200 years of independence from French colonial rule, the citizens of the island remain vulnerable to poverty, poor health, and political chaos.

The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years.

The three actors I admire the most are all dead. Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy and the French actor, Jean Gabin. They're all very natural, sort of masculine without being overly macho.

I'm 50% Asian actually, so yes I was born in Paris but I feel more international than French so I can't talk about French women.

Ping-pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century, and it was called Wiff-waff! And there, I think, you have the difference between us and the rest of the world. Other nations, the French, looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner; we looked at it an saw an opportunity to play Wiff-waff.

When Picasso painted in Paris, was he a Spanish or a French painter? It does not matter, he was Picasso, whatever the influences surrounding him. He simply chose Paris because it was the ideal place for him to sell his creation.

If I were not French I would choose to be - Scotch.

If somebody had started on a remake of French Kiss before I announced my own film, I would have dropped my subject. If someone else starts after me, what am I to do?

Much of what Germany and France have done in the rescue of Greece has also helped German and French banks, who for a long time were major creditors for Greece and Greek banks.

When I arrived at Columbia, I gave up acting and became interested in all things French. French poetry, French history, French literature.

From the sea came a boat with some Israeli commando soldiers who took me by the commando boat to the yacht and put me on the yacht. In the yacht I asked people, who are you. And they said we are Israelis, French and British.

I know that John Adams has had a very hard time directing French ensembles.

The first of these phases is that of grammar, invented by the Greeks and carried on unchanged by the French. It never had any philosophical view of a language as such.

Why, so soon as French Canadians, who are in a minority in this House and in the country, were to organise as a political party, they would compel the majority to organise as a political party, and the result must be disastrous to themselves.

I was chef to the French Presidents between '56 and '59, finished with de Gaulle, and during de Gaulle I remember serving Eisenhower, Nehru, Tito, Macmillan; those were the heads of state at the time. I never saw anyone. No one would ever, ever, ever come to the kitchen. You couldn't even see them.

A month before the season I stop putting ketchup on my french fries.