Paris In Literature Quotes & Sayings

MERCER USED TO PASS THE TIME, during his post-grad months of flipping burgers out on Route 17, by polishing his opinions on life and literature for that future date when they would grace the pages of The Paris Review. — Garth Risk Hallberg

Perhaps the critics are right: this generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation
who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him
but he must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope
qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for, and are not commonly come by with much ease, either by a critic's formula or by a critic's yearning. — Bill Styron

... she was a pudding of immaturity and precocious wisdom that had not yet set into a stable mold. — Mark Zero

I've always loved films, always. I studied literature and I went to Columbia in New York and I went to Paris for part of one year and ended up staying there. — Jim Jarmusch

The French have a penchant for absolutism, for thinking that things are all one way or all another, which is why their politics are marked by a general inability to compromise and why they tend to hold their personal opinions until the bitter end, even after they have clearly lost an argument. — Mark Zero

As William Bernstein describes in 'A Splendid Exchange', 'The Arabs, invigorated by their conquests, experienced a cultural renaissance that extended to many fields; the era's greatest literature, art, mathematics, and astronomy was not found in Rome, Constantinople, or Paris, but in Damascus, Baghdad and Cordova. — Christopher Lascelles

The whole of Paris is a vast university of Art, Literature and Music ... it is worth anyone's while to dally here for years. Paris is a seminar, a post-graduate course in everything. — James Thurber

It seemed that in Paris you could discuss classic literature or architecture or great music with everyone from the garbage collector to the mayor. — Julia Child

I congratulate you on your success stealing the painting. — Mark Zero

All of my education at Harvard, then Oxford, then Paris was in literature - even my thesis was on Shakespeare. — Jonathan Kozol

Never run upstairs when someone's chasing you. Don't try to quick-draw a man who already has his gun out. Never light a match in the dark in a strange building. Half of staying safe is just keeping your head and being prudent. — Mark Zero

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. — William Kennedy

Sometimes he spent hours together in the great libraries of Paris, those catacombs of departed authors, rummaging among their hoards of dusty and obsolete works in quest of food for his unhealthy appetite. He was, in a manner, a literary ghoul, feeding in the charnel-house of decayed literature. — Washington Irving

The Cubist paintings in the Centre Pompidou in Paris were strange but amazing. The big fat magical cat said they made her eyes hurt. — Jim Shanahan

Beautiful features, always immaculately dressed, the kind of woman that makes a great impression. Their hair is always nicely curled. They major in French literature at expensive private women's colleges, and after graduation find jobs as receptionists or secretaries. They work for a few years, visit Paris for shopping once a year with their girlfriends. They finally catch the eye of a promising young man in the company, or else are formally introduced to one, and quit work to get married. They then devote themselves to getting their children into famous private schools. As he sat there, Tsukuru pondered the kind of lives they led. — Haruki Murakami

Patricia could see Remy dead. Her perfect corpse floating face down in the Oaxacan tiled infinity pool, her flawless stomach distended with decomposition gases, eyes fixed and dilated. — Shannon Bradley-Colleary

She might not know what your routine is, but I do," I said softly. "So put the lantern down. You're not burning me yet, and we both know it."
"What's she saying?" Sarah demanded, hobbling over. His white brows drew together, and I allowed a little smile to play on my lips. "Awfully bossy with you, isn't she? Then again, it makes sense. She's got the pants on, and you're the one in the dress. — Jeaniene Frost

Within a week I walked the streets of Tel-Aviv, I wandered around Budapest and found myself admiring the Architecture of Paris. That's the power of great literature. — Byron Ortiz

The first conversation began awkwardly, although Espinoza had been expecting Pelletier's call, as if both men found it difficult to say what sooner or later the would have to say. The first twenty minutes were tragic in tone, with the word fate used ten times and the word friendship twenty-four times. Liz Norton's name was spoken fifty times, nine of them in vain. The word Paris was said seven times, Madrid, eight. The word love was spoken twice, once by each man. The word horror was spoken six times and the word happiness once (by Espinoza). The word solution was said twelve times. The word solipsism seven times. The world euphemism ten times. The word category, in the singular and the plural, nine times. The word structuralism once (Pelletier). The term American literature three times. The words dinner or eating or breakfast or sandwich nineteen times. The words eyes or hands or hair fourteen times. The the conversation proceeded more smoothly. — Roberto Bolano

I was doing Hamlet in the off-season, and I had a specific idea in my mind about what I wanted that character to look like, and because it's going to lead into the next year, I knew that it was going to have to be established somewhere in the show. — Michael Shanks

In a cookie factory, different cookies are baked in the shape of animals, cars, people, and airplanes. They all have different names and forms, but they are all made from the same dough, and they all taste the same. — Stephen Mitchell

Music is always key to me, whether it's 'Miami Vice' or not 'Miami Vice.' It's dictated by the story, about what Crockett and Tubbs and Isabella and Trudy are doing. — Michael Mann

When you're used to being in dangerous situations, you develop a sixth sense about your surroundings, about where possible enemies might be lurking, how many steps it will take to reach the next corner on a dead run, the best hiding places if bullets start to fly... — Mark Zero

The past gathered out of the darkness where it stayed, and the dead raised themselves to live before him; and the past and the dead flowed into the present among the alive, so that he had for an intense instant a vision of denseness into which he was compacted and from which he could not escape, and had no wish to escape. Tristan, Iseult the fair, walked before him; Paolo and Francesca whirled in the glowing dark; Helen and bright Paris, their faces bitter with consequence, rose from the gloom. And he was with them in a way that he could never be with his fellows who went from class to class. — John Edward Williams

One of Lucy's admirers took to her, apparently."
"Took to her?" echoes William, his own feelings for Sugar causing him to construe the phrase benignly.
"Yes," said Bodley "With her own riding crop."
"Beat her very severely."
"Particularly about the face and mouth."
"I understand all the fight's gone out of her now."
"Well, as you can imagine," he says. "Madam Georgina doesn't have high hopes. Even if she's willing to wait, there will be scars."
Ashwell, eyes downcast, is picking at the lint on his trousers. "Poor girl," he laments.
"Yes," smirks Bodley. "How are the fighty maulen. — Michel Faber

In French culture, the best way of buying time or getting off the hook entirely in a thorny personal situation is to claim that it's complicated. The French did not invent love, but they did invent romance, so they've had more time than any other culture on earth to refine the nuances of its language. — Mark Zero

A man's life is of more value than a woman's. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. Our lives revolve in curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that a man's life progresses. I have just learnt this, and much else with it, from Lord Goring. And I will not spoil your life for you, nor see you spoil it as a sacrifice to me, a useless sacrifice. — Oscar Wilde

I say my greatest strength is my speed, and I think that I could use some work on my concentration. — Jacoby Jones

We do not know whether it is good to live or to die. Therefore, we should not take delight in living, nor should we tremble at the thought of death. We should be equiminded towards death. This is the ideal. It may be long before we reach it, and only a few of us can attain it. Even then, we must keep it constantly in view, and the more difficult it seems of attainment, the greater should be the effort we put forth. — Mahatma Gandhi

Stories are the only things that give any meaning to our pointless, shapeless lives."
"Literature above all is a mode of transport. It lifts you up out of whatever situation you're in and it puts you down somewhere else. It fucking escapes you. That's what literature is."
-Jumping Off a Cliff: An Interview with Kevin Barry, the Paris Review. November 2013 — Kevin Barry

How lovely the months, the years with him had been. At the moment I hadn't understood their importance, and now here I was, growing sad. The rain the cold the snow the scents of Spring along the Arno and on the flowering streets of the city, the warmth we gave each other. Choosing a dress, glasses. His pleasure in changing me. And Paris, the exciting trip to a foreign country, the cafes, the politics, the literature, the revolution that would soon arrive, even though the working class was becoming integrated. And him. His room at night. His body. All finished. I tossed nervously in my bed unable to sleep. I'm lying to myself , I thought. Had it really been so wonderful ? I knew very well that at that time, too, there had been shame. And uneasiness, and humiliation, and disgust: accept, submit force yourself. Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to rigorous examination — Elena Ferrante

Caleb was like a hurricane that swept through my life, stirring up things inside of me that I never knew existed. He is a longing I will never cure. — Tarryn Fisher

Tis true what Hemingway says--if we're lucky enough to live our dreams in youth, as Ernest Hemingway did in 1920's Paris and I did with the Beat poets, then youth's dreams become a moveable feast you take wherever you go--youthful love remains the repast plentiful; exquisite, substantive and good. You can live on happy memories. Eat of them forever. — Alison Winfield Burns

My wife loved games, mostly mind games, but also actual games of amusement, — Gillian Flynn

How can you be kissing at a time like this? Have you no respect for the dead? — Mark Zero

I still maintain that the times get precisely the literature that they deserve, and that if the writing of this period is gloomy the gloom is not so much inherent in the literature as in the times. — Bill Styron

I never had the idea of moving to Paris and becoming something. I liked the idea of living in Paris because it seemed to have so many parts of life I really enjoyed. The people there seemed to prize literature and art, food and drinking, a more hedonistic way of living. — Rosecrans Baldwin

And I had just kissed my ex-girlfriend, who had cried, while my current girlfriend was in jail. So far, it had not been my best day. — Mark Zero

O my God, how true it is that we may have of Thy gifts and yet may be full of ourselves! — Jeanne Marie Bouvier De La Motte Guyon