Francoise Sagan Quotes - Page 2

For this was the round of love: fear which leads on desire, tenderness and fury, and that brutal anguish which triumphantly follows pleasure.

I don't think there's any intrinsic difference between a lover and a husband. ... If I were cynical, I would say that a woman should have both a good husband and a lover. But I'm not cynical so I'll just say that a woman should have a lover who's a good husband and a husband who's a good lover, perhaps both.

Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.

Art must take reality by surprise. It takes those moments which are for us merely a moment, plus a moment, plus another moment, and arbitrarily transforms them into a special series of moments held together by a major emotion.

curiosity is the beginning of wisdom.

It amused me to think that one can tell the truth when one is drunk and nobody will believe it.

Writing is just having a sheet of paper, a pen and not a shadow of an idea of what you are going to say.

The questions I would have liked to ask people were: ‘Are you in love? What are you reading?

Every little girl knows about love. It is only her capacity to suffer because of it that increases.

I feel sorry for men. They have more problems than women, because they now have to compete with women.

No one is more conventional than a woman who is falling out of love.

For me writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz.

I think the best way to waste time is to try to save time.

The happiness of others is never bearable for very long.

I recognize limitations in the sense that I've read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and Shakespeare . . . Aside from that I don't think of limiting myself.

It is healthier to see the good points of others than to analyze our own bad ones.

Nothing brings on jealousy like laughter.

happiness has always seemed to me a great achievement.

He refused categorically all ideas of fidelity or serious commitments. He explained that they were arbitrary and sterile. From anyone else such views would have shocked me, but I knew that in his case they did not exclude tenderness and devotion - feelings which came all the more easily to him since he was determined that they should be transient.

I did not find him absurd. I saw he was kind, that he was on the verge of real love. I thought it would be nice for me to be in love with him, too.

Marriage? It's like asparagus eaten with vinaigrette or hollandaise, a matter of taste but of no importance.

It isn't common sense that is paramount in this world, it's wishful thinking.

No one ever has time to examine himself honestly, and most people look no further than their neighbors' eyes, in which they may see their own reflection.

I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.

You should celebrate the end of a love affair as they celebrate death in New Orleans, with songs, laughter, dancing and a lot of wine.