Colette Quotes & Sayings

Time spent with a cat is never wasted. — Colette

Youth is not the age to seduce, it's the age to be seduced. — Colette

Her nature is like a demonstrative cat's; she is delicate, acutely sensitive to cold, and incredibly caressing in her ways. — Colette

Writing only leads to more writing. — Colette

A few days later, I found my mother beneath the tree, motionless with excitement, her head turned toward the heavens in which she would allow human religions no place. — Colette

She (her mother) noticed that I was prettier than I was at home. Thus do girls change color in the warmth of masculine desire, whether they are fifteen or thirty. — Colette

If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles. — Colette

It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer ... and everything collapses. — Colette

But what is the heart, madame? It's worth less than people think. it's quite accommodating, it accepts anything. You give it whatever you have, it's not very particular. But the body ... Ha! That's something else again! It has a cultivated taste, as they say, it knows what it wants. A heart doesn't choose, and one always ends up by loving. — Colette

Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings. — Colette

The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen. — Colette

The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen. — Colette

[Julie] had lived a great deal among lies, before plumping for a small life of her own, a sincere and restricted life from which all pretense, even in matters sensual, was banished. How many crazy decisions and allegiances to successive aspects fo the truth! Had she not, one day when her costume for a fancy dress had demanded short hair, cut off the great chestnut mane that fell below her waist when she let it down? 'I could have hired a wig,' she thought. 'I might also, at a pinch, have passed the rest of my life with Becker or Espivant. If it comes to that, I could also have gone on stirring puddings in a saucepan at Carneilhan. The things "one might have done" are, in fact, the things one could not do ... — Colette

Look for a long time at what pleases you, and longer still at what pains you ... — Colette

My son, be rich and live your own life! Tell yourself that you're the incarnation of an ancient aristocracy. Model yourself on the feudal barons. You're a warrior — Colette

Love is not an honorable sentiment — Colette

If he's getting married, he's not longer interesting. — Colette

Don't ever wear artistic jewelry; it wrecks a woman's reputation — Colette

Hope costs nothing. — Colette

That lovely voice; how I should weep for joy if I could hear it now! — Colette

Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet. — Colette

I liked being with him, as I like being with swift animals who are motionless when at rest. — Colette

Don't cudgel your brains over my little problems. — Colette

Love ... is also a form of poison, for to fall in love is to want and to need everything necessary for survival from one all-powerful and barely differentiated Other. — Colette

We all go through that. Everyone's feeling a little out of sorts. No one knows exactly where he stands. Work is a wonderful way of putting you on your feet again, old boy — Colette

I have lived ten years of wild rovings, of conquests and discoveries, in those woods; the day when I have to leave them my heart will be very heavy. — Colette

To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one. — Colette

People who are perfectly sane and happy don't make good literature, alas. — Colette

Curious how people can go on doing the same thing day after day! — Colette

The word 'pure' has never revealed an intelligent meaning to me. I can only use the word to quench and optical thirst for purity in the transparencies that evoke it - in bubbles, in a volume of water, and in the imaginary latitudes entrenched, beyond reach, at the very center of a dense crystal. — Colette

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. — Colette

- and how time flies! What, has it already been twenty years, already forty years that we are together? Why, how terrible! We haven't yet said all we wanted to say to each other ... May we have a little respite, or else may we be allowed to begin all over again! — Colette

Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight. For it is the only suffering that we endure without ever becoming used to it. — Colette

Beautiful December grapes, blue as plums, every grape a little skinful of sweet, tasteless water — Colette

There is no doubt that, if ever my heart were to call my master Chance by another name, I should make an excellent Catholic. — Colette

Everything that astonished me when I was young astonishes me even more today. The time will never come for me when there are no more discoveries to make. Every morning the world is as new again and I will not cease to flower except through death. — Colette

As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow. — Colette

The seventeenth of March. In other words, spring. Desmond, people who think themselves smart, I mean those in the height of fashion, women or men - can they afford to wait any longer before buying their spring wardrobes? — Colette

I felt my soul overwhelmed with sorrow because, though I'm not in the least fond of dancing, I should have liked to dance with someone whom I adored with all my heart: I should have liked to have that someone there so that I could relieve my tension by telling him everything that I confided only to Fanchette or to my pillow (and not even to my diary) because I so wildly needed that someone, and this humiliated me, and I would never surrender myself except to the someone whom I should completely love and completely know - dreams, in short, that would never be realized! — Colette

By associating with the cat, one only risks becoming richer. — Colette

You don't think before you do something foolish. You do your thinking afterwards. — Colette

It can't drag on this way much longer," she said to herself. "One evening he'll whistle under my window, I'll go down by a ladder or a knotted rope and he will carry me away on a motorcycle, off to a den where his subjects will be assembled. He'll say: 'Here is your new Queen.' And ... and ... it will be terrible!"
viii. Their Queen is away and anarchy reigns! The Journal said so! How grand to be Queen, with a red ribbon and a revolver ... — Colette

It is the image in the mind that links us to our lost treasures; but it is the loss that shapes the image, gathers the flowers, weaves the garland. — Colette

In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge. — Colette

So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days. — Colette

My true friends always gave me this supreme proof of attachment: a spontaneous aversion to the men I loved. — Colette

There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall. — Colette

We only do well the things we like doing. — Colette

There are no ordinary cats. — Colette

Don't you think, that there are very few men who know, without raising their voice or changing their tone, to say ... what has to be said? — Colette

One can't write of love while making love. — Colette

The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not. — Colette

No one asked you to be happy. Get to work. — Colette

Do I have a separate room? Don't I make love to you well?"
She hesitated, smiling with exquisite suspicion. "Do you call that love, Fred?"
"There are other words for it, but you wouldn't appreciate them. — Colette

It is only in pain that a woman is capable of rising above mediocrity. Her resistance to pain is infinite; one can use and abuse it without any fear that she will die, as long as some childish physical cowardice or some religious hope keeps her from the suicide that offers her a way out. — Colette

Music is love in search of a word. — Colette

Mothers sound so stupid when they praise their daughters to the skies. — Colette

Be happy.
It's one way of being wise. — Colette

To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly. — Colette

A good book is a portal that will take you anywhere in the world. — Colette

What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner. — Colette

I have no equals, I have only my fellow wayfarers. — Colette

I went to collect the few personal belongings which ... I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude. — Colette

All this is still my kingdom, a small portion of the splendid riches which God distributes to passers-by, to wanderers and to solitaries. The earth belongs to anyone who stops for a moment, gazes and goes on his way; the whole sun belongs to the naked lizard who basks in it. — Colette

Two o'clock already! High time for a woman of letters who has turned out badly to go to sleep. — Colette

And since, through lack of vocation or from habit, [Julie] was prone to confuse pity with boredom, she felt herself practically a prisoner ... — Colette

They exchanged looks full of mischievous security. — Colette

Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
(Casual Chance, 1964) — Colette

Total absence of humor renders life impossible. — Colette

After you, probably anyone can have me who wants me. A woman, many women. But never another cat. — Colette

I want nothing from love, in short, but love. — Colette

At the top of the iron staircase leading to the stage, the good, dry, dusty warmth wraps me round like a comfortable dirty cloak. — Colette

Oh! To rationalize oneself into matrimony ... Oh! To decide something so grave in life 'after mature consideration'! Choose the color of a dress after a thousand hesitations, but for God's sake, get married without reflecting on it! That's the grace I wish I wish for you. May you even be so distracted that day that you walk past the registry office without remembering to stop there. — Colette

I was changing. Slowly, if you like, but what matter? To change is the great thing. — Colette

I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually. — Colette

The seventeenth, Desmond! Come along at once; everything's all right. We're going to buy a huge bracelet for my wife, an enormous cigarette-holder for Madame Peloux, and a tiny tie-pin for you — Colette

To write is to pour one's innermost self passionately upon the tempting paper, at such frantic speed that sometimes one's hand struggles and rebels, overdriven by the impatient god which guides it - and to find, next day, in place of the golden bough that bloomed miraculously in that dazzling hour, a withered bramble and a stunted flower. — Colette

I heard on their lips the language of passion, of betrayal and jealousy, and sometimes despair - languages with which I was all too familiar. — Colette

I have found my voice again and the art of using it ... — Colette

What an ennobling sadness you lent to my evening's enjoyment. — Colette

I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer. — Colette

Incompatibility became established between them like a new season of the year. — Colette

When she raises her eyelids, it's as if she were taking off all her clothes. — Colette

I have nothing to say to men and never had. Judging from the little time I've spent with them, their usual conversation is sickening. Besides, they bore me. I believe," he hesitated, then concluded, "I believe I don't understand men. — Colette

You were listening at the door, Gigi!"
"No, Grandmamma."
"Yes, you had your ear to the keyhole. You must never listen at key-holes. You don't hear properly and so you get things all wrong. — Colette

Do not think, as you read this, that I am painting my own portrait. Be patient, it is only my model. — Colette