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Quotations on France 126 Quotes Found I am just like 99% of my friends in France, who say on their resume they can speak fluent English. In reality, they can't even count up to three. I am very proud to be a part of the Livestrong Foundation. I am maybe only a member but I give everything I can to be sure that people understand that cancer is a disease for everybody - not only in France, in Europe, in Asia, it is all over the world. We must fight together, we must make something to fight the cancer, we must Livestrong. When I go back to France now I spend all the my time with press and sponsors. I do not have a lot of time to spend at home with my family. Today's cinema is a global art form, it is impossible to make movies for a market the size of France, representing no more than 4% of the world's total. Of the love or hatred God has for the English, I know nothing, but I do know that they will all be thrown out of France, except those who die there. At the beginning of the twentieth century, every single leading Muslim intellectual was in love with the west, and wanted their countries to look just like Britain and France. On landing at New York I caught the yellow fever. The kind man who commanded the ship that brought me from France took charge of me and placed me under the care of two Quaker ladies. To their skillful and untiring care I may safely say I owe my life. Pam has always been my glamorous big sister - 13 years older than I. She played on the women's circuit for nine years and came home to tell me stories of France, Japan. France is not poetic; she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic. 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 France. Colonialism is an idea born in the West that drives Western countries - like France, Italy, Belgium, Great Britain - to occupy countries outside of Europe. France, mother of arts, of warfare, and of laws. To be a gourmet you must start early, as you must begin riding early to be a good horseman. You must live in France, your father must have been a gourmet. Nothing in life must interest you but your stomach. In Holland and Spain and France, where so many of us come from, people aren't interested in the sex lives of their players. We don't hear these stories - even in Italy where the media is right on top of football. Must we be put to shame by much smaller and poorer countries, by Ireland, France, Austria or Sweden, who have understood that a nation's support of its arts is a matter of both national pride and cultural survival? I was signed when I was 19 years old, in 1980. I went to Germany and France. Seeing the world at that time was just an awesome experience for a teenager. In France, that let down the barriers more than a hundred years ago, the feeling of antipathy is still strong enough to sustain an anti-Jewish political party. Being identified as a poet in France or Denmark or India one is greeted with gracious respect. Now, I had been drawing all this time - especially in France of course - so, when I came back, my father gave me the chance to do a cover for one of the books he published. Still, American composers working in France have had a pretty hard time. If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France. I like health-conscious cooking, but growing up in the South, I do love southern cooking; southern France, southern Italy, southern Spain. I love southern cooking. The government itself is running exactly like the Sopranos and they sit back and they make deals. And they say okay, 'I'm going do this: France, you're getting the pipelines.' The biggest markets for my books outside the UK are France and Italy, and those are the two countries where I also have the closest personal relationships with my translators - I don't know whether that's a coincidence, or if there's something to be learned from it. There will always be nations. The United States will last a long, long time, I believe. France and Germany and Japan, China, other nations, they're going to exist. But they're losing their significance and ability to deal with certain matters. One of the greatest joys in my life was giving a lecture in French at the College de France. The quality of life is so different in France. There is the possibility of living a simple life. I would never contemplate raising my daughter in LA. I would never raise any child there. I liked Berkeley tremendously, Berkeley was a very leftist campus. I came to love that city as much as I love Paris or the south of France or New York. On my return to Cornwall I discovered that I was living in a tropical paradise. For now I am content to explore my own home and our nearest neighbour France. The single currency should allow the European Union, and therefore France, to balance its monetary strength with the United States. It should help us adjust to the development of China. France on its own cannot impose its point of view. But neither should it give up on its demands. With a clear vote for change France will be in a strong position. I'd love to follow the Tour de France one day. It's a really exciting spectacle. I've only seen it once as it was coming into Paris and that was very exciting for me. I have memories of that. American high school students trail teenagers from 14 European and Asian countries in reading, math and science. We're even trailing France. One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness. So, thanks God, our films, our first films were suddenly being appreciated by the Western media; especially France was very good, and Switzerland was very good. I remember playing football dressed in peculiar costumes with some friends in France and laughing so hard we couldn't even stand up, let alone kick the ball. In France, a woman may forget that she is neither young nor handsome; for the absence of these claims to attention does not expose her to be neglected by the male sex. Once upon a time there was an old country, wrapped up in habit and caution. We have to transform our old France into a new country and marry it to its time. As an adolescent I was convinced that France would have to go through gigantic trials, that the interest of life consisted in one day rendering her some signal service and that I would have the occasion to do so. I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French. I have no intention of going back to France, except for yearly visits to meet my family. Actually, today I had to defend the Bush Administration in France again. They refuse to accept, because of their political ideology, that he has actually done more than any American President for Africa. But it's empirically so. It was a mistake. I was wrong, but I discovered this many years later. I was acting on the basis of this mandate given me by the most important leaders of the world: President Bush's father, prime minister of France, President Mitterand, the Chinese, everybody. A friend in the War Office warned me that I was in Kitchener's black books, and that orders had been given for my arrest next time I appeared in France. But do you know, I shall not be sorry to die. I shall be glad, Monsieur. And why glad, you ask? Because I love France and hate the Germans who have put this war on us. I am going to fight - I, a socialist and Syndicalist - so that we shall make an end to war, so that the little ones of France will sleep in peace, and the women go without fear. I have worked with this red all over the world - in Japan, California, France, Britain, Australia - a vein running round the earth. It has taught me about the flow, energy and life that connects one place with another. And it is practically the same in the case of the four or five million poor peasants in France, and also for Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, and two of the Scandinavian countries. Everywhere small and medium sized industry prevails. France generates a significant part of its energy requirements from fission reactors and these have achieved a perfect safety record. We build ours all differently. Altogether apart from that, it would be a disgrace to us to make this bargain with Germany at the expense of France, a disgrace from which the good name of this country would never recover.
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