Paris Quotes - Page 8

Being the first black Nobel laureate, and the first African, the African world considered me personal property. I lost the remaining shreds of my anonymity, even to walk a few yards in London, Paris or Frankfurt without being stopped.

Aspiring writers should read the entire canon of literature that precedes them, back to the Greeks, up to the current issue of The Paris Review.

Paris is one of the most beautiful places in all the world. Unfortunately, I was so homesick I couldn't appreciate its beauty.

Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.

Sending Paris Hilton to jail for being the most loathed celeprosy lesion in the history of the species seems like a happening idea at first - forty-five days at Century Regional Detention Center is so the new thirty days at Promises Malibu! But it sets a dangerous precedent to jail celebs just because someone hates them.

The ego knows itself by comparison.

I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?

In the past we used to come over to see what was going on in London or Paris or Milan or wherever - it's pretty much the same stuff everywhere [now], and people are wearing the same things, because it's all instantaneous with the Internet.

In 1994 while on weekend manoeuvres in France, I commandeered a Chieftain tank without permission of my immediate superiors. I then attempted to invade Paris. However, en route I stopped off at Disneyland, or Eurodisney as it was then called, and was subsequently apprehended on Space Mountain.

At the time I started in ballet they were dancing 'The Spirit of Champagne' on pointe, in Paris. I thought, 'I don't want to dance the spirit of champagne, I want to drink it!

[On Paris:] I do not know any city so beautiful and you can be unhappy there and notice your unhappiness less, having the city to look at.

Paris dictates fashion to the whole world.

Paradoxically, the freedom of Paris is associated with a persistent belief that nothing ever changes. Paris, they say, is the city that changes least. After an absence of twenty or thirty years, one still recognizes it.

Because I'm Parisian, I wanted to show a Paris that I don't see at the movies, so I spent a lot of time looking for places that have never been filmed, for streets that have never been filmed because there's a thing about Paris, where it's kind of like a charming music box, this luminous cocoon, like those things that have fake snow in them that you turn upside down.

I am in Paris. Yes ma'am , I made it back. I came up from Berlin, stopped here ten days, fought a losing battle against my deepest inclinations, pulled myself out by the hair and went to Madrid...Madrid is a lovely enchanting city, and there was almost ready for me a kind of penthouse full of sunlight, a roof garden, and so on. I gave one look at it all, returned to the hotel and went to bed and wept bitterly for eleven hours...Why? Because I had seen Paris and could not endure the thought of being anywhere else.

I remember when Lindbergh arrived in Paris, I was one of the first persons to know about his landing, because as the French people know that I was born in St. Louis, thinking I would be very proud to announce it to the public, they gave me the news first. I was then starring in the 'Folies Bergere.'

The important thing about Paris is not so much that one sees exciting work, but one meets people who feel that art is worth living completely for. This whole atmosphere is very good for work.

If I would want to have a huge audience, I would make American movies, not French movies, because there is a limit of course with French language. If I prefer to shoot in my own language, it is to play with my language, to play in my Paris, and I have complete freedom in France. It's so amazing. If American directors could imagine how free I am, they would have asked for political asylum immediately.

The dream of a writer is to be surprised by his characters. All of a sudden, they are living their own lives; they are not prisoners anymore. . . . Tati taught me how to observe, how to sit in a cafe in Paris and to look at the passersby and to guess what their story is, even a little moment of their story.

Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.

When spring comes to Paris the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise.

The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi.

Rien ne se peut comparer a' Paris. Nothing can compare to Paris.

I have looked for the center of the art scene. I went to Paris as a student. I lived in Venice, California.

She is a mortal danger without meaning to be one; she's exquisite without giving ita thought; shes a trap set by nature, a rose in which love lies in ambush! Anyone who has seen her smile has known perfection. She creates grace without movement and makes all divinity fit into her slightest gesture. And neither Venus in her shell, nor Diana striding in the great, blossoming forest, can compare to her when she goes through the streets of paris in her sedan chair.