Francoise Sagan Quotes & Sayings

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

If you treat life well, life is usually good to you. And I love life. There's a long-standing affair between us. — Francoise Sagan

Happiness is always subject to slander. — Francoise Sagan

After Proust, there are certain things that simply cannot be done again. He marks off for you the boundaries of your talent. — Francoise Sagan

Ever since, I've been looking everywhere for parents, in my lovers, in my friends, and it's all right with me to have nothing of my own - not any plans and not any worries. I like this kind of life, it's terrible but true. I don't know why it is, but the moment I wake up something in me feels things are going right. — Francoise Sagan

To jealousy, nothing is more frightful than laughter. — Francoise Sagan

Love is worth whatever it costs. — Francoise Sagan

We are born crying, and for good reason,' he reflected. 'And the rest of our lives is bound to be a muted reiteration of that cry. — Francoise Sagan

She said she didn't love him, and he said it didn't matter, and the poverty of their words brought tears to their eyes. — Francoise Sagan

I was thinking that I should be content to kiss him until the break of day. Bertrand ran out of kisses too soon; desire made them superfluous in his eyes. They were only a stage on the road to pleasure, not something inexhaustible and self-sufficient, as Luc had revealed them to me. — Francoise Sagan

It would be bad form for me to describe people I don't know and don't understand. — Francoise Sagan

Love lasts about seven years. That's how long it takes for the cells of the body to totally replace themselves. — Francoise Sagan

As for Lucile, her first awareness of the world each morning was the sensation of being made love to, and she would find herself drifting into consciousness with a mixture of surprise, pleasure, and a vague anger at this half-rape, which deprived her of all of her traditional rituals of waking up - opening her eyes, closing them again, rejecting the new day or else welcoming it - all the confused and deliciously private little conflicts in her — Francoise Sagan

Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary. — Francoise Sagan

Writing takes a pen, a sheet of paper and, to start with, just the shadow of an idea. — Francoise Sagan

I had a strong desire to write and some free time. — Francoise Sagan

If you don't have imagination you're lost. But it's a virtue that's becoming increasingly rare, especially in its higher form: spontaneity. Mad, happy spontaneity. — Francoise Sagan

People respect unhappiness and find it especially hard to forgive success. — Francoise Sagan

Every little girl knows about love. It is only her capacity to suffer from it that increases. — Francoise Sagan

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. — Francoise Sagan

I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live. — Francoise Sagan

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. — Francoise Sagan

Art must take reality by surprise. — Francoise Sagan

My love of pleasure seems to be the only consistent side of my character. Is it because I have not read enough? — Francoise Sagan

There is no such thing as an ideal man. The ideal man is the man you love at the moment. — Francoise Sagan

Passion is the salt of life, and that at the times when we are under its spell this salt is indispensable to us, even if we have got along very well without it before. — Francoise Sagan

I liked to feel his desire. On the other hand, I didn't like myself. That type of wild, cold little girl - "I have white teeth and a black heart" - seemed to me playacting for old gentlemen. — Francoise Sagan

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

Illness is the opposite of freedom. It makes everything impossible. — Francoise Sagan

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. — Francoise Sagan

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. — Francoise Sagan

In love, as in finance, only the rich can get credit. — Francoise Sagan

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

We always want someone we've treated badly to be gay. It's less upsetting. — Francoise Sagan

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

Happiness has always seemed to me a great achievement. — Francoise Sagan

Cynicism always enchanted me by producing a delicious feeling of self-assurance and of being in league with myself — Francoise Sagan

It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the 'fronts' people assume before one another's eyes, and the 'front' a writer puts on the face of reality. — Francoise Sagan

I like men to behave like men. I like them strong and childish. — Francoise Sagan

I realised that procrastination can rule our lives, yet not provide us with any arguments in its defence. — Francoise Sagan

his conscience washed clean by happiness. — Francoise Sagan

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. — Francoise Sagan

She wasn't a courtesan, nor an intellectual, nor the mother of a family - she was nothing at all. And — Francoise Sagan

Sometimes I belonged to the pure and beautiful race of nomads, and at others to the poor withered breed of hedonists. — Francoise Sagan

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. — Francoise Sagan

For unhappiness has nothing to teach, and resignation is ugly. — Francoise Sagan

I dreamt of being a writer once I started to read. I started to write 'Bonjour Tristesse' in bistros around the Sorbonne. I finished it, I sent it to editors. It was accepted. — Francoise Sagan

No one talks about money more than people who have too much of it ... — Francoise Sagan

At night, time becomes a calm sea. It goes on for ever. — Francoise Sagan

Your idea of love is rather primitive. It's not a series of sensations, independent of each other ... It's something different ... a sense of loss ... — Francoise Sagan

Nicole had put on weight. This is the effect which, in three cases out of four, unhappiness has upon women. The process of eating guarantees at least the health of the body. — Francoise Sagan

I have loved to the point of madness; that which is called madness, that which to me, is the only sensible way to love. — Francoise Sagan

Nothing becomes some women more than the prick of ambition. Love, on the contrary, may make them very dull. — Francoise Sagan

He had always known that he was the lover and she was the object of love. — Francoise Sagan

The happiness of people who are in love and who are loved shows in their faces. They have an expression that's at once very far away and very much part of the present. — Francoise Sagan

I always believe things are going to work out. — Francoise Sagan

I found myself both touched and irritated by the discovery that she was vulnerable. — Francoise Sagan

Usually I avoided college students, whom I considered brutal, wrapped up in themselves, particularly in their youth, in which they found material for drama or an excuse for their own boredom. I did not care for young people. — Francoise Sagan

Neither one of them hesitated to translate feeling into action, when an opportunity arose. — Francoise Sagan

We are torn between the craving to know and the despair of having known. — Francoise Sagan

What we love we may also despise. — Francoise Sagan

Houses are for private living, for friends, and for dogs. — Francoise Sagan

Whisky, gambling and Ferraris are better than housework. — Francoise Sagan

For what Luc was in fact proposing was just a game, an enticing game, but, even so, one that could destroy my undoubtedly quite genuine feelings for Bertrand; and it could destroy something else within me, something ill-defined but fiercely felt, which, whether I liked it or not, was opposed to transience. Or, at the very least, to the intentionally transient nature of what Luc what was offering. And then, even if I was able to conceive of any passion or liaison as being short-lived, I couldn't accept in advance that it had to be that way. Like any individual for whom life is a series of charades, I could bear the charades only if they were written by me, and by me alone. — Francoise Sagan

The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read. — Francoise Sagan

Curiosity is the beginning of wisdom. — Francoise Sagan

Thirty-year-old children who refused to act like grown-ups. — Francoise Sagan

We make our own symbols, after the event has passed and begun to spoil. — Francoise Sagan

For what are we looking for if not to please? I do not know if the desire to attract others comes from a superabundance of vitality, possessiveness, or the hidden, unspoken need to be reassured. — Francoise Sagan

No one, but no one, ever behaves 'well' in bed unless they love or are loved - two conditions seldom fulfilled. — Francoise Sagan

A Strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else. — Francoise Sagan

He knew this euphoria of hers: it was the euphoria of being alone. — Francoise Sagan

Money may not buy happiness, but I'd rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus. — Francoise Sagan

There are moments when you feel trapped, ill at ease. A year later the same feeling can turn out to be the theme of a book. — Francoise Sagan

Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance. — Francoise Sagan

Summer fell upon Paris, with everyone still intently following his own subterranean course of passion or habit and looking up like a startled creature of the night at the blazing June sun. Now, all of a sudden, there was an impelling necessity to go away, to give a continuation or a meaning to the winter that had just gone by. — Francoise Sagan

All my life, I will continue obstinately to write about love, solitude and passion among the kind of people I know. The rest don't interest me. — Francoise Sagan

There is a certain age when a woman must be beautiful to be loved, and then there comes a time when she must be loved to be beautiful. — Francoise Sagan

What he does not yet understand is that whatever makes a woman strong is the reason that certain men will love her, even if behind her strengths there hide great weaknesses. This he will learn from You. He will learn that You are bubbly, funny, and sweet only because You have all Your weaknesses. But by then it will be too late. — Francoise Sagan

Nothing brings on jealousy like laughter. — Francoise Sagan

It is a known fact that every man's heart is set on having a daughter. — Francoise Sagan

When I was a child? Only the nostalgia for those days of utter, absolute irresponsibility, now long gone. But for her (and this she would never have admitted to anyone), those days weren't gone at all. She still felt totally irresponsible. — Francoise Sagan

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

A love affair based on jealousy is doomed from the start ... It is certanly a sign of love, but it's a sign that it's already dying. — Francoise Sagan

He lifted me up and held me close against him, my head on his shoulder. At that moment I loved him. In the morning light he was as golden, as soft, as gentle as myself, and he would protect me. — Francoise Sagan

The number of times she'd said "wait and see" to herself in her thirty years of existence was way beyond counting. — Francoise Sagan

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

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

When you make a decision to write according to a set schedule and really stick to it, you find yourself writing very fast. At least I do. — Francoise Sagan

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

One partner is always more in love than the other. — Francoise Sagan

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. — Francoise Sagan

She'd like to be indispensable; that's what every woman wants ... — Francoise Sagan

The happiness is real, and the love is not. — Francoise Sagan

Life has confirmed for me the thoughts and impressions I had when I was 18, as if it was all intuition. — Francoise Sagan

Then we'll take the train to Paris tonight. There is a night train, isn't there? We'll catch it at Cannes. — Francoise Sagan

When man, Apollo man, rockets into space, it isn't in order to find his brother, I'm quite sure of that. It's to confirm that he hasn't any brothers. — Francoise Sagan

One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter. — Francoise Sagan

Every time I see a film about Joan of Arc I'm convinced she'll get away with it. It's the only way to get through life. — Francoise Sagan

Looking for pleasure is the best way to ensure you won't find it. — Francoise Sagan