Jean D'ormesson Quotes & Sayings

Algebra is generous; she often gives more than is asked of her. — Jean Le Rond D'Alembert

Thirty-two coups d'etat are enough. — Jean-Bertrand Aristide

In France, if you have any sort of talent, you'd better keep it here. And if you're going to go abroad, it had better not be America. The old battle - American versus Frog cinema. It's ridiculous. — Jean Reno

Now, I get how strange this is going to sound, but good old Craig here calling Mr. Cole a "fucking dick" somehow rubbed me the wrong way. I inexplicably felt like I was the only person in the world who'd earned that privilege. — Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

People know that I have a great love for cinema. Not just for commercial cinema, but for the 'cinema d'auteur.' But to me, two of the great 'auteurs' are actually actors and they both happen to be French. One is Alain Delon and the other is Jean-Paul Belmondo. — Harvey Weinstein

I'd love to open a private museum in Paris, London, or New York, but I don't have the money. If I were Bill Gates or Paul Allen, the first thing I would do is build a museum. — Jean Pigozzi

But in the daytime it was all right. And when you'd had a drink you knew it was the best way to live in the world because anything might happen. I don't know how people live when they know exactly what's going to happen to them each day. — Jean Rhys

I felt suffocated. And alone. More alone than ever. Every year, I ostentatiously crossed out of my address book any friend who'd made a racist remark, neglected those whose only ambition was a new car and a Club Med vacation, and forgot all those who played the Lottery. I loved fishing and silence. Walking the hills. Drinking cold Cassis, Lagavulin, or Oban late into the night. I didn't talk much. Had opinions about everything. Life and death. Good and evil. I was a film buff. Loved music. I'd stopped reading contemporary novels. More than anything, I loathed half-hearted, spineless people. — Jean-Claude Izzo

I let Richard walk out on me. I think he'd have gone anyway, but I just sat on the floor and watched him go. I didn't stand in his way. I figured it was his choice, and you cant hold someone if they don't want to be held. If someone really wants to be free of you, you have to let them go. Well, fuck that, fuck that all to hell. Don't go, Asher, please, don't go. I love the way your hair shines in the light. I love that way you smile when you're not trying to hide or impress anyone. I love your laughter. I love the way your voice can hold sorrow like the taste of rain. I love the way you watch Jean-Claude when he moves through a room, when you don't think anyone's watching, because its exactly the way I watch him. I love your eyes. I love your pain. I love you. — Laurell K. Hamilton

When I was excited about life, I didn't want to write at all. I've never written when I was happy. I didn't want to. But I've never had a long period of being happy, Do you think anyone has? I think you can be peaceful for a long time, When I think about it, if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than write. You see, there's very little invention in my books. What came first with most of them was the wish to get rid of this awful sadness that weighed me down . I found when I was a child that if I could put the hurt into words, it would go. It leaves a sort of melancholy behind and then it goes. — Jean Rhys

High office, is like a pyramid; only two kinds of animals reach the summit - reptiles and eagles. — Jean Le Rond D'Alembert

Il n'y a pas d'autre univers qu'un univers humain, l'univers de la subjectivite humaine. There is no other universe except the human universe, the universe of human subjectivity. — Jean-Paul Sartre

How can we not ask at every turn, 'What is going to happen? How will this turn out?' The main thing is not to consent consciously to anxiety or a troubled mind. The moment you realize you are worrying, make very quickly an act of confidence: 'No, Jesus, You are there: nothing--nothing--happens, not a hair falls from our heads, without Your permission. I have no right to worry." Perhaps He is sleeping in the boat, but He is there. He is always there. He is all-powerful; nothing escapes His vigilance. He watches over each one of us 'as over the apple of His eye.' He is all love, all tenderness. — Jean C.J. D'Elbee

But a rascal of a child (that age is without pity).
[Fr., Mais un pripon d'enfant (cet age est sans pitie). — Jean De La Fontaine

When I was 15, I left school to start a magazine, and it became a success because I wouldn't take no for an answer. I remember banging on James Baldwin's door to ask for an interview when he came to England. Then I got Jean-Paul Sartre's home phone number and asked him to contribute. If I'd been 30, he might have said no, but I was a 15-year-old with passion and he was charmed. Making money was always just a side product of having a good time and creating things nobody'd seen before. — Richard Branson

It is the wee hours of the morning, ma petite. The room service menu is somewhat limited. Jason has donated blood twice to me tonight; he needed protein." Jean-Claude smiled. "It was either take-out, or he could eat Larry. I thought you'd prefer take-out. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Vassily cleared his throat, probably impatient with Gabriel's bookshelf manners. 'You'll have to excuse me,' Gabriel said, putting back the booklet, 'I have a severe addiction to ink.'
'Don't we all?' Vassily nodded. 'Thank God we have other addictions to assuage it a little. — Jean-Christophe Valtat

As an intense, nicotine-stained, Jean-Paul Sartre sort of man, wasn't it simple logic to expect that he'd be limited to intense, nicotine-stained Jean-Paul Sartre sorts of Women? — Richard Yates

Oh God, now she couldn't remember why she'd ever left him. She needed him. More than air or sunlight and beaches, definitely more than garlic. — Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

Could it be, God forbid, that nationality is only a superficial, insignificant layer of the onion that is your being? What would you think of the man who would say of himself 'I am an overcoat' just because he happened to be wearing one? — Jean-Christophe Valtat

Just go on..and faith will soon return. — Jean Le Rond D'Alembert

I am worn out by the insults and vexations that this work brings down on us. — Jean Le Rond D'Alembert

Phoebe was thinking, Insubordinate. What a lovely word. And when was the last time she'd heard a nice-looking young man use it? Why-never, that's when. What a treat. And to have a ruler who could say conscientious and citizenry in the same sentence. Lovely. — Jean Ferris

I always felt that with an Antoine Doinel film, Truffaut was taking a vacation, that Francois could relax when making a Doinel film. All of the language came to him very easily. 'The 400 Blows,' I felt, was a collage of all his childhood experiences. Every time he felt an Antoine Doinel film was necessary, he'd make one. — Jean-Pierre Leaud

On the way back something very strange happened. I didn't realize I was going to say it, but I said out loud, "I wish I was dead"... the love and the beauty and the ecstasy of the whole experience I'd just gone through were really so alien. I didn't even know the man... it had been a one-night jag... he was married and had children... and I just felt lost. It hardly seemed worth living any more because once again I was alone. — Jean Stein

Yes, gods could take a humanlike body, but ultimately, it was only a shell to house their true form. They were made of light, of pure energy. Humans, even those who'd become immortal through the various ways - given the gift by the gods, turned into vampires or other immortal creatures - were still made up of tangible mass. — Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

As is well known the principle of virtual velocities transforms all statics into a mathematical assignment, and by D'Alembert's principle for dynamics, the latter is again reduced to statics. Although it is is very much in order that in gradual training of science and in the instruction of the individual the easier precedes the more difficult, the simple precedes the more complicated, the special precedes the general, yet the min, once it has arrived at the higher standpoint, demands the reverse process whereby all statics appears only as a very special case of mechanics. — Carl Friedrich Gauss

It was actually quite easy to work with Uggie, because he's a really well trained dog. Very talented. I just had to follow him a little bit, improvise a little bit. Sometimes he'd follow me. Especially because of the sausages I had in my pocket. — Jean Dujardin

You'd have to go all the way back to 1972 to find a version of me who didn't care about theater, who didn't read Playbill and watch the Tony Awards, or get why Bob Fosse's choreography was so groundbreaking that all you need to say is 'Fosse hands' and theater people know what you mean. — Jean Hanff Korelitz

I walked towards her. Jean-Claude grabbed my arm. "Do not harm her, Anita. She is under our protection."
"I swear to you that I will not lay a finger on her tonight. I just want to tell her something."
He released my arm, slowly, like he wasn't sure it was a good idea. I stepped next to Monica, until our bodies almost touched. I whispered into her face, "If anything happens to Catherine, I will see you dead."
She smirked at me, confident in her protectors. "They will bring me back as one of them."
I felt my head shake, a little to the right, a little to the left, a slow precise movement. "I will cut out your heart." I was still smiling, I couldn'tseem to stop. "Then I will burn it and scatter the ashes in the river. Do you understand me?"
She swallowed audibly. Her health-club tan looked a little green. She nodded, staring at me like I was the bogey man.
I think she believed I'd do it. Peachy keen. I hate to waste a really good threat — Laurell K. Hamilton

If Captain Jean-Luc Picard asked you to serve him aboard the starship Enterprise, you'd likely be happy to. You would recognise him as a great leader and a good man, and so you wouldn't have any problem following his orders. This is basically the relationship God wants with us - not slaves, not pets, not possessions, we would be co-workers and friends. — Lewis N. Roe

Becca watched Tucker bend at the waist. Mmm, mmm. He was sure built nice. From the top of his felt hat to the tips of his worn leather boots. Those leather chaps he'd just slung around his hips weren't too bad, either.
He reached back to buckle the chap straps first around one jean-clad thigh, and then the other. And she'd thought the rodeo would be boring. Ha! She could watch Tucker do this all day. Buckle and unbuckle. Bend and stand.
She let out a sign filled with pure contentment. "All right, Em. I'll admit it. Cowboys are hot."
Next to her, Emma laughed. "Oh, yeah. — Cat Johnson

Gaming is the destruction of all decorum; the prince forgets at it his dignity, and the lady her modesty. — Jean Le Rond D'Alembert

If just for one week in the South would show them some simple, impartial courtesy. I wonder what would happen. Do you think it'd give 'em airs or the beginnings of self-respect? Have you ever been snubbed, Atticus? Do you know how it feels? No, don't tell me they're children and don't feel it: I was a child and felt it, so grown children must feel, too. A real good snub, Atticus, makes you feel like you're too nasty to associate with people. How they're as good as they are now is a mystery to me, after a hundred years of systematic denial that they are human. I wonder what kind of miracle we could work with a week's decency. — Harper Lee

He was still looking steadily at her. His eyes were clear, cool and hard, but something in the depths of them flickered and shifted. She thought: 'He'd take any advantage he could
fair or unfair. Caddish he is.' Then as she stared back at him she felt a great longing to put her head on his knees and shut her eyes. To stop thinking. Stop the little wheels in her head that worked incessantly. To give in and have a little peace. The unutterably sweet peace of giving in. — Jean Rhys

Principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d'Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior of France, Abbe of Saint Honore de Lerins; Francois de Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; Cesar de Sabran de Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandeve; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the Oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of Senez. The portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated this apartment; and this memorable date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there engraved in letters of gold on a table of white marble. — Victor Hugo

She'd permed her hair to within an inch of its life. When she moved her head, the mass of hair followed along behind her a split second later.
Perhaps you had to live through the late 70's, early 80's to appreciate this. — Jean Thompson

It happend that Bob referred in front of Paul to the young woman met in Chantilly; it happened that Paul spoke to Bob of the one from the cinema that he'd had so much trouble seeing again. It never occurred to them that these portraits might bear a certain resemblance to each other, and the fact is that they bore none at all. — Jean Echenoz

Since I was seventeen I thought I might be a star. I'd think about all my heroes, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix ... I had a romantic feeling about how these people became famous. — Jean-Michel Basquiat

As for her, I'd forgotten her for the moment. So I shall never understand why, suddenly, bewilderingly, I was certain that everything I had imagined to be truth was false. False. Only the magic and the dream are true - all the rest's a lie. Let it go. Here is the secret. Here. — Jean Rhys

The introduction of the Christian religion into the world has produced an incalculable change in history. There had previously been only a history of nations
there is now a history of mankind; and the idea of an education of human nature as a whole.
an education the work of Jesus Christ Himself
is become like a compass for the historian, the key of history, and the hope of nations. — Jean-Henri Merle D'Aubigne

I had started out in life trusting everyone and now I trusted no one. So I had a few acquaintances and no close friends. It was perhaps in reaction against the inevitable loneliness of my life that I'd find myself doing bold, risky, even outrageous things without hesitation or surprise. I was usually disappointed in these adventures and they didn't have much effect on me, good or bad, but I never quite lost the hope of something better or different. — Jean Rhys

We walked the length of Jackson Square, stopping to look at the work of a couple of artists who'd set up their sidewalk shops for the day.
"Look." Eugenie stopped in front of an acrylic painting of a mustached man with curly dark hair, hooded eyes, and a big hooked nose. He looked like he'd steal the hubcaps off your grandmother's Cadillac.
"It's Jean Lafitte, our most famous pirate," the artist said. "He was quite a character."
She had no idea. She also had badly missed the mark on his looks. His hair wasn't that curly, he'd been clean-shaven the whole time I'd known him, his nose was straight and in perfect proportion to the rest of his features, and he didn't have hooded black eyes. Still, he might find it entertaining. "How much?" I asked. — Suzanne Johnson

I'd have liked to have gone to bed with Jean Harlow. She was a beautiful broad. The fellow who married her was impotent and he killed himself. I would have done the same thing. — Groucho Marx

From the driver's side, one of Echo's jean-clad legs dangled.
"I've got a hard-on just looking at her, man," said Isaiah as we strolled up the drive.
"You're ate up," I replied, hoping he meant the car, not Echo. I'd hate to throw down with someone I considered family. — Katie McGarry

Push on and faith will catch up with you. — Jean Le Rond D'Alembert

In England it was enough that Newton was the greatest mathematican of his century; in France he would have been expected to be agreeable too. — Jean Le Rond D'Alembert

I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language. — Jean-Paul Sartre

God accomplishes his designs unknown even to those whom he employs as his instruments. — Jean-Henri Merle D'Aubigne

Richard stood, running his fingers through his thick hair, getting it out of his face, and showing his chest off to good advantage. For the first time, I wondered if he'd done it on purpose. I searched his face for that edge of teasing that Jean-Claude had, that knowledge that even that simple movement touched me. There was nothing. Richard's face was guileless, handsome, empty of ulterior motives. I exchanged glances with Jean-Claude. He shrugged. "If you do not understand him, do not look to me. I am not in love with him." Richard looked puzzled. "Did I miss something? — Laurell K. Hamilton

Sitting alone with Jean, Avery felt for the first time that he was part of the world, engaged in the same simple happiness that was known to so many and was so miraculous. He wanted to know everything; he did not mean this carelessly. He wanted to know the child and the schoolgirl, what she'd believed in and what she'd loved, what she'd worn and what she'd read
no detail was too small or insignificant
so that when at last he touched her, his hands would have this intelligence. — Anne Michaels

When Joan D' Arc was asked by her judges why as a Christian she did not love the British, she answered that she did love them, but she loved British in their country. In the same way, we do not hate the Turks, we love them, but in their country. — Jean-Marie Le Pen

When in doubt, do what they do in books, was one of Gabriel's secret mottos and - that rarest of things - a principle that he actually lived by. — Jean-Christophe Valtat

For the first few years after I lost weight, I would feel for my hip bones every morning when I woke up so I would know I wasn't fat. It was like pinching myself so I'd know I wasn't dreaming. — Jean Nidetch

I have often thought, during these conferences, about the comment that Maurice Maignan, one of the first companions of Ozanam, made after a retreat: "One thought strikes me. All the means of sanctification which the preacher proposes and develops require a strong soul...I will not profit from exercises designed for strong souls. O my God, show me the exercises designed for feeble souls. Would the saints have forgotten or disdained them? Yet even if the saints did not think of these poor souls, who are nevertheless most numerous, You, Lord, my mercy, have not abandoned them. You Yourself, Good Master, have burdened Yourself with them. I know that better than anyone. I am one of those souls, and I bless You for having revealed to the weak and the little ones what You do not always accord to the valiant and the strong. — Jean C.J. D'Elbee

Sure she'd found males attractive. But wanting them? Needing to feel their skin? Taste their lips? Run her fingers through their hair as she growled and begged them for all things dirty?
Not until now.
Until Jean-Baptiste. — Alexandra Ivy

If Hank and I - Hank. She glanced down the long, low-ceilinged livingroom at the double row of women, women she had merely known all her life, and she could not talk to them five minutes without drying up stone dead. I can't think of anything to say to them. They talk incessantly about the things they do, and I don't know how to do the things they do. If we married - if I married anybody from this town - these would be my friends, and I couldn't think of a thing to say to them. I would be Jean Louise the Silent. I couldn't possibly bring off one of these affairs by myself, and there's Aunty having the time of her life. I'd be churched to death, bridge-partied to death, called upon to give book reviews at the Amanuensis Club, expected to become a part of the community. It takes a lot of what I don't have to be a member of this wedding. — Harper Lee

If all good, respectable people had one face, I'd spit in it. — Jean Rhys

One should make movies innocently - the way Adam and Eve named the animals, their first day in the garden ... Learn from your own interior vision of things, as if there had never been a D.W.Griffith, or a Eisenstein, or a [John] Ford, or a [Jean] Renoir, or anybody. — Orson Welles

Thus metaphysics and mathematics are, among all the sciences that belong to reason, those in which imagination has the greatest role. I beg pardon of those delicate spirits who are detractors of mathematics for saying this ... The imagination in a mathematician who creates makes no less difference than in a poet who invents ... Of all the great men of antiquity, Archimedes may be the one who most deserves to be placed beside Homer. — Jean Le Rond D'Alembert

Jean following close behind. The plan was for them to cover us as we entered. Getting in was easy. The door was unlocked. I went in low, clearing the first visible area. After Bear entered, I moved past the door. I had to trust that Pierre and Jean would act accordingly. A feat more difficult due to the necessary silence. We'd never worked together, but tactics were tactics, and training was training. They'd done this before. Room by room, floor by floor, we investigated the house. And we found it empty. The thought of Bashir al-Sharaa slipping out of my grasp once again gnawed at my gut. — L.T. Ryan

With her head on his shoulder, Jean Louise was content. It might work after all, she thought. But I am not domestic. I don't even know how to run a cook. What do ladies say to each other when they go visiting? I'd have to wear a hat. I'd drop the babies and kill 'em. — Harper Lee

When I was 17, I was at La Coupole brasserie, and Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir asked me to join them at their table. They were fascinated that I'd watched their programme on existentialism back home and wanted to understand nothingness and being. — Jerry Hall

He loves me, he doesn't love my bowels, if they showed him my appendix in a glass he wouldn't recognize it, he's always feeling me, but if they put the glass in his hands he wouldn't touch it, he wouldn't think, "that's hers," you ought to love all of somebody, the esophagus, the liver, the intestines. Maybe we don't love them because we aren't used to them, but if we saw them the way we saw our hands and arms maybe we'd love them; the starfish must love each other better than we do. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I exist. It's sweet, so sweet, so slow. And light: you'd think it floated all by itself. It stirs. It brushes by me, melts and vanishes. Gently, gently. There is bubbling water in my throat, it caresses me- and now it comes up again into my mouth. For ever I shall have a little pool of whitish water in my mouth - lying low - grazing my tongue. And this pool is still me. And the tongue. And the throat is me. — Jean-Paul Sartre

D'Alembert was always surrounded by controversy ... he was the lightning rod which drew sparks from all the foes of the philosophes ... Unfortunately he carried this ... pugnacity into his scientific research and once he had entered a controversy, he argued his cause with vigour and stubbornness. He closed his mind to the possibility that he might be wrong ... — Jean Le Rond D'Alembert

What do you do,' said Jean, 'with, ah, "ungifted" children when you have them?'
'Cherish them and raise them, you imbecile. Most of them end up working for us, in Karthain and elsewhere. What did you think we'd do, burn them on a pyre?'
'Forget I asked — Scott Lynch

I sent Patch a text. GUESS WHERE I AM?
I DON'T HAVE TO GUESS. YOU'RE WEARING THE TRACKING DEVICE, he answered.
I looked down. Sure enough, I'd worn the jean jacket today.
GIVE ME 20 AND I'LL BE THERE, Patch texted. WHICH ROOM SPECIFICALLY ARE YOU IN?
YOUR BEDROOM.
MAKE THAT TEN MINUTES. — Becca Fitzpatrick

Helena abruptly stopped, cursing herself for deciding to go on this stupid trip to the ruins. If only she'd stayed at the hotel with her friends, none of this would've happened. Now her life was basically over; she'd end up dinner or a prisoner of some deranged nudist vampire. — Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

It was around this time that I'd begun trying to perfect the art of fucking with people's minds. I'd figured out that when someone else was hogging the limelight, you could cut him down to size by bringing up a subject he didn't know anything about. If the other person knew a lot about literature, I'd talk about the Velvet Underground; if he knew a lot about rock, I'd talk about Messiaen; if he knew a lot about classical music, I'd talk about Roy Lichtenstein; if he knew a lot about pop art, I'd talk about Jean Genet; and so on. Do that in a small provincial city and you never lose an argument. — Ryu Murakami

Stumped, Ia sat there and tried to comprehend her crew's acceptance. It was possible; it had clearly happened, but . . . she had come here expecting protests, a struggle, a fight to get at least some of them to understand . . .

"Everything alright?" Harper asked her, leaning close.

"I . . . think so?" she said, looking up at him. "Actually, everything just went . . . really well. Too well. I think I may need to worry about this for a while."

He chuckled and shook his head. "Just accept it, Ia. If you said it's necessary, this crew would follow you into Hell itself, no questions asked."

"Excuse me, but I'd ask questions," Helstead argued from his other side. "Like how many demons are we taking out, which ones we're supposed to leave in place, and whether or not we're taking over permanently or just visiting, and if so, for how long? — Jean Johnson

And do you know the story about Haydn's head? They cut it away from the still-warm cadaver so some insane scientist could take apart the brain and pinpoint the location of musical genius. And the Einstein Story? He'd carefully written his will with instructions to cremate him. They followed his orders, but his disciple, ever loyal and devoted, refused to live without the master's gaze on him. Before the cremation, he took the eyes of the cadaver and put them in a bottle of alcohol to keep them watching him until the moment he should die himself. That's why I said that the crematory fire is the only way our bodies can escape them. It's the only absolute death. And I don't want any other. Jean-Marc, I want an absolute death. — Milan Kundera

If one looks at all closely at the middle of our own century, the events that occupy us, our customs, our achievements and even our topics of conversation, it is difficult not to see that a very remarkable change in several respects has come into our ideas; a change which, by its rapidity, seems to us to foreshadow another still greater. Time alone will tell the aim, the nature and limits of this revolution, whose inconveniences and advantages our posterity will recognize better than we can. — Jean Le Rond D'Alembert

It's a relief not having to thank Somebody for every mouthful you eat. (I dare say I'm blasphemous; but you'd be, too, if you'd offered as much obligatory thanks as I have.) — Jean Webster

If I release you, you won't scream? I'd rather not continue the conversation like this."
She shook her head, and he freed her. She scrambled away from him, feeling the grooves of the headboard bite into her back when she slammed into it.
He sat back on her bed, his hands on his jean-clad thighs. The hair at his neck curled from dampness. "You don't have to be afraid of me."
She almost laughed. "A stranger breaks in, and I'm supposed to be cool with that?"
"Amy, we're not strangers. — Jaime Rush

Martina's gone with people who don't want to be out, and it drives her crazy because she'd rather be open. — Billie Jean King

It's the honest point of view of an artist: You have to please.I'd like viewers to come away from my films unsure whether they've understood them. I want to leave them wondering. — Jean-Pierre Melville

We all fantasize about a relationship we'd like to do over or something we'd like to change about our past. I think there are a lot more opportunities for second chances in our lives than we think. — Jean Smart

At the table of a gentleman living in the Chausee d'Antin was served up an Arles sausage of enormous size. "Will you accept a slice?" the host asked a lady who was sitting next to him; "you see it has come from the right factory."It is really very large," said the lady, casting on it a roguish glance; "What a pity it is unlike anything." — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Wicked sisters,' said Jean, as he let the hatchets fall out of his right robe sleeve and into his hand, 'I'd like you to meet the Wicked Sisters. — Scott Lynch

You want to know what I'm afraid of? All right, I'll tell you. I'm afraid of men - yes, I'm very much afraid of men. And I'm even more afraid of women. And I'm very much afraid of the whole bloody human race. Afraid of them? Of course I'm afraid of them. Who wouldn't be afraid of a pack of damned hyenas? [ ... ] And when I say afraid - that's just a word I use. What I really mean is that I hate them. I hate their voices, I hate their eyes, I hate the way they laugh. I hate the whole bloody business. It's cruel, it's idiotic, it's unspeakably horrible. I never had the guts to kill myself or I'd have got out of it long ago. — Jean Rhys

Alone again. But not lonely. This was my fate. I'd reached a point so low that I actually stopped wishing for relief. Hope was dangerous. Giving up was self-preservation. I was better off trusting no one. — Riley Jean

A great man may be the personification and type of the epoch for which God destines him, but he is never its creator. — Jean-Henri Merle D'Aubigne

The reason Armand Gamache could go there was because it wasn't totally foreign to him. He knew it because he'd seen his own burned terrain, he'd walked off the familiar and comfortable path inside his own head and heart and seen what festered in the dark. And one day Jean Guy Beauvoir would look at his own monsters, and then be able to recognize others. And maybe this was the day and this was the case. He hoped so. — Louise Penny

If you really want to know, I'd rather not have been born at all. I find life very tiring. The thing's done now, of course, and I can't alter it. But there will always be this regret at the back of my mind, I shall never quite be able to get rid of it, and it will spoil everything. The thing to do now is to grow old quickly, to eat up the years as fast as possible, looking neither right nor left. — Jean-Marie G. Le Clezio

He says: 'it doesn't matter. What I know is that I could do this with you' - he makes a movement with his hands like a baker, kneading a loaf of bread - 'and afterwards you'd be different. — Jean Rhys

America is a melting pot of immigrants. So actually, if you took all of the immigrants outside of America, you'd be missing a lot of flavor, starting with the food, with the culture, with the dance, with everything. — Wyclef Jean

I think that Billie (Jean King) and Zina (Garrison), they have a whole lot of experience. Even if I don't quite agree with something or have a different way of doing it this week, whatever they said, I did it right away and I found out that it was correct. I think that's helped a lot ... I'm having fun. I had a lot of fun out there. Sometimes I was ready to smile
but I knew I'd lose focus
because I was doing things that I'd done in practice and we talked about. I was ready to laugh and give someone a high-five, but it wasn't time for that. — Venus Williams

He used to have a hellish wife named Rita, but she'd died about a decade ago and Big Jean didn't get around too well on his own. When Hurricane Rita bulldozed the bayou, Big Jean's house was hit hard. Eureka had heard his hoarse voice say, twenty times, The only thing meaner than the first Rita was the second Rita. One stayed in my house, the other tore it down. — Lauren Kate

I've always thought - and I don't even know if I'd be right for the part - that Jean Seberg would make a great biopic. She was in Jean-Luc Godard's 'Breathless,' she played Joan of Arc. She had this eventful and traumatic adulthood, she thought the FBI was after her, and she became a darling of the French New Wave. — Gillian Jacobs

Some time later, after Noah had discreetly disappeared, Declan's Volvo glided up, as quiet as the Pig was loud. Ronan said, "Move up, move up" to Blue until she scooted the passenger seat far enough for him to clamber behind it into the backseat. He hurriedly sprawled back in the seat, throwing one jean-covered leg over the top of Adam's and laying his head in a posture of thoughtless abandon. By the time Declan arrived at the driver's side window, Ronan looked as if he had been asleep for days.

"Lucky I was able to get away," Declan said. He peered into the car, eyes passing over Blue and snagging on Ronan in the backseat. His gaze followed his brother's leg to where it rested on top of Adam's, and his expression tightened.

"Thanks, D," Gansey said easily. With no effort, he pushed open the door, forcing Declan back without seeming to. He moved the conversation to the region of the front fender. It became a battle of genial smiles and deliberate hand gestures. — Maggie Stiefvater

Clusters of distant lights was the view of Mankind that he liked the best. The lights had the archaic charm of little fires on a plain, and the frailty about them, if it did not excuse anything, at least explained a lot of Man's stubborn ruthlessness. Mankind had not started the mess that was life, after all. And on the whole, it had been an interesting species to be a part of, the girls especially, as long as you remembered to watch your back. — Jean-Christophe Valtat

I used to do that routine about my daughter being a hippy with the dirty sneakers and dirty blue jeans, but why a beard? And you know people would actually come to me and say, 'Does your daughter really have a beard?' I'd say, 'No, I made her shave it, but I let her keep the mustache. — Jean Carroll

Beauvoir was quiet, watching the Chief, taking in the gleam in his eye, the enthusiasm as he described what he'd found. Not the physical landscape, but the emotional. The intellectual.
Many might have thought the Chief Inspector was a hunter. He tracked down killers. But Jean Guy knew he wasn't that. Chief Inspector Gama he was an explorer by nature. He was never happier than when he was pushing the boundaries, exploring the internal terrain. Areas even the person themselves hadn't explored. Had never examined. Probably because it was too scary. — Louise Penny

Lord, what fools these mortals be! Wonder on till truth make all things plain A foolish heart, that I leave here behind I know a bank where the wild thyme blows If we shadows have offended She'd — Jean Hegland

You hung with me when all the others turned away, turned up their noses We liked the same music, we liked the same bands, we liked the same clothes Yeah we told each other that we were the wildest, the wildest things we'd ever seen Now I wish you would have told me, I wish I could have talked to you Just to say goodbye, Bobby Jean. — Bruce Springsteen

When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness. — Jean-Paul Sartre

One magnitude is said to be the limit of another magnitude when the second may approach the first within any given magnitude, however small, though the second may never exceed the magnitude it approaches. — Jean Le Rond D'Alembert

I feel when you walk into somebody's apartment on Fifth Avenue or house in Malibu and you see a Basquiat, a Warhol, a Richard Prince, you say to yourself, '$700,000, $2.2 million, $350,000 ... ' To me that is completely uninteresting. I'd rather go to a house where there's great art and I have no idea who the work is by. — Jean Pigozzi

I'd like to have two armies: one for display with lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, staffs, distinguished and doddering generals, and dear little regimental officers who would be deeply concerned over their general's bowel movements or their colonel's piles, an army that would be shown for a modest fee on every fairground in the country. — Jean Larteguy