Heads In French Quotes & Sayings

Enough already of Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault poured like ketchup over everything. Lacan: the French fog machine; a grey-flannel worry-bone for toothless academic pups; a twerpy, cape-twirling Dracula dragging his flocking stooges to the crypt. Lacan is a Freud T-shirt shrunk down to the teeny-weeny Saussure torso. The entire school of Saussure, inluding Levi-Strauss, write their muffled prose of people with cotton wool wrapped around their heads; they're like walking Q-tips. Derrida: a Gloomy Gus one-trick pony, stuck on a rhetorical trope already available in the varied armory of New Criticism. Derrida's method: masturbating without pleasure. It's a birdbrain game for birdseed stakes. Neo-Foucaldian New Historicism: a high-wax bowling alley where you score points just by knockng down the pins. — Camille Paglia

Then I sit there, running the heat to try and thaw my feet after Lucy's flat, and watch the people going past. They make me edgy. Dozens and dozens of people, they just keep coming, and every single one of their heads is crammed with stories they believe and stories they want to believe and stories someone else has made them believe, and every story is battering against the thin walls of the person's skull, drilling and gnawing for its chance to escape and attack someone — Tana French

I was chef to the French Presidents between '56 and '59, finished with de Gaulle, and during de Gaulle I remember serving Eisenhower, Nehru, Tito, Macmillan; those were the heads of state at the time. I never saw anyone. No one would ever, ever, ever come to the kitchen. You couldn't even see them. — Jacques Pepin

Step 1: The sender places the present in the briefcase, which they lock with their padlock and remove their key. They then send the locked briefcase to the receiver. Note: While the briefcase is en route from sender to receiver, it is safe from all adversaries, because they cannot remove the padlock from the briefcase. However, the receiver is also unable to obtain the present. Step 2: The receiver locks the briefcase with their own padlock and removes the key. They then return it to the sender. Note: The briefcase is now locked with two padlocks so no one can get the present. Step 3: The sender uses their own key to remove their padlock from the briefcase and returns the briefcase to the receiver. Note: The only lock on the briefcase belongs to the receiver. Step 4: The receiver removes their padlock from the briefcase to obtain the present. — Fred C. Piper

Another reason we know that language could not determine thought is that when a language isn't up to the conceptual demands of its speakers, they don't scratch their heads dumbfounded (at least not for long); they simply change the language. They stretch it with metaphors and metonyms, borrow words and phrases from other languages, or coin new slang and jargon. (When you think about it, how else could it be? If people had trouble thinking without language, where would their language have come from-a committee of Martians?) Unstoppable change is the great given in linguistics, which is not why linguists roll their eyes at common claims such as that German is the optimal language of science, that only French allows for truly logical expression, and that indigenous languages are not appropriate for the modern world. As Ray Harlow put it, it's like saying, Computers were not discussed in Old English; therefore computers cannot be discussed in Modern English. — Steven Pinker

The whole military structure in Haiti that existed until the early 1990s was put in place by the American occupation. At the top there were Southern white officers, who led an army that crushed the indigenous resistance - the cacos. A high-ranking U.S. officer said when he arrived, "To think these niggers speak French!" Later, Haitian officers attended the notorious School of the Americas at Fort Benning. The threat from the U.S. is something that is always hanging over people's heads: If we don't behave, we'll have occupation again. — Edwidge Danticat

Some people know they are condemned; some have time to pray, and others die struggling and screaming, fighting to their last breath. An irate killer stamps in to the tribunal - "Use your heads, give us a bloody chance, can't you? We can't keep up." So the prisoners are waved away airily by their judges - "Go, you're free." Outside the door a steady man waits to fell them. Freedom is the last thing they know. — Hilary Mantel

About your easy heads my prayers
I said with syllables of clay.
What gift, I asked, shall I bring now
Before I weep and walk away?
Take, they replied, the oak and laurel.
Take our fortune of tears and live
Like a spendthrift lover. All we ask
Is the one gift you cannot give. — Tana French

My film is actually very critical of the level of French we're using back home. To have an immigrant from an ancient French colony come and do that is a little critical of our education system back home. Balzac is definitely over their heads. It's meant to be funny also because it would be also probably too much for kids in France, but kids in France would know who Balzac is. But, back home at that age, I guarantee you they don't know who he is. — Philippe Falardeau

No one needs a relationship. What you need is the basic cop-on to figure that out, in the face of all the media bullshit screaming that you're nothing on your own and you're a dangerous freak if you disagree. The truth is, if you don't exist without someone else, you don't exist at all. And that doesn't just go for romance. I love my ma, I love my friends, I love the bones of them. If any of them wanted me to donate a kidney or crack a few heads, I'd do it, no questions asked. And if they all waved good-bye and walked out of my life tomorrow, I'd still be the same person I am today. — Tana French

Everybody loved Audrey, she was so sweet and unassuming and nice to everybody. Some stars go to their dressing rooms between takes, but she didn't. — Sam Wasson

I'm a let you finish, but the French Revolution had the best severed heads of ALL TIME. — Kanye West

Id her beware of French principles, which had led the French to cut off their king's and queen's heads. — Elizabeth Gaskell

Sarah Palin's real quality is that she is her own best creation. — Julianne Moore

In the Middle Ages, I think the French kings murdered slightly fewer of their family members than the English kings, though I haven't actually counted the heads. — Karen Maitland

Most people are only too delighted to wreck each other's heads. And for the tiny minority who do their pathetic best not to, this world is going to go right ahead and make sure they do it anyway. — Tana French

There's something magical about the experience of taking a blank sheet of paper and being able to make it take flight with just a few careful, strategic folds. The art of paper plane making has been used for generations, not just to prototype big ideas and lofty innovations - without the humble paper plane, there might have been no Wright brothers' first flight - but also to teach children about engineering, physics, possibility and small miracles. With one or two simple folds, a child learns that her actions can affect her results and that the way she builds something matters. — Bernadette Jiwa

I think British men build up the idea of us French girls having some magic extra sex appeal so much, they lose their heads. I can't really understand the whole thing - but it makes me laugh. It's such a cliche to think all French girls are well dressed, elegant, sophisticated and sexy. Some are utter slobs, I promise you that. — Eva Green

You would save them. If you could."
"No. There are periods in revolution when to live is a crime, and people must know how to yield their heads if they are demanded. Perhaps mine will be. If that time comes, I won't dispute it. — Hilary Mantel

For one last second, I saw them again the way I had that evening: a golden apparition on the front steps, shining and poised like young warriors stepped out of some lost myth, heads lifted, too bright to be real. — Tana French

While the Zionists try to make the rest of the World believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn't even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organisation for their international world swindler, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.
It is a sign of their rising confidence and sense of security that at a time when one section is still playing the German, French-man, or Englishman, the other with open effrontery comes out as the Jewish race. — Adolf Hitler

People have wanted to narrate since first we banged rocks together & wondered about fire. There'll be tellings as long as there are any of us here, until the stars disappear one by one like turned-out lights. — China Mieville

At first they'd thought the guillotine would be a sweet, clean business, but when you have twenty, perhaps thirty heads to take off in a day, there are problems of scale. — Hilary Mantel

We lay side by side on the extension roof, hands behind our heads, elbows just touching. My head was still spinning a little, not unpleasantly, from the dancing and the wine. The breeze was warm across my face, and even through the city lights I could see constellations: the Big Dipper, Orion's Belt. The pine tree at the bottom of the garden rustled like the sea, ceaselessly. For a moment I felt as if the universe had turned upside down and we were falling softly into an enormous black bowl of stars and nocturne, and I knew, beyond any doubt, that everything was going to be all right. — Tana French

I felt different, changing. Like today was my day, if I could just figure out how. Like danger, but my danger, sweet tricky urgent luck, tumbling through the air, heads or tails? — Tana French

The gracefulness of the slender fishing boats that glided into the harbor in Dakar was equaled only by the elegance of the Senegalese women who sailed through the city in flowing robes and turbaned heads. I wandered through the nearby marketplace, intoxicated by the exotic spices and perfumes. The Senegalese are a handsome people and I enjoyed the brief time that Oliver and I spent in their country. The society showed how disparate elements
French, Islamic, and African
can mingle to create a unique and distinctive culture. — Nelson Mandela