Men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness.
— Coco Chanel
Valuable French Woman quotations
Women react differently: a French woman who sees herself betrayed by her husband will kill his mistress; an Italian will kill her husband; a Spaniard will kill both; and a German will kill herself.
Fashion changes, but style endures.
The envious are not satisfied with equality;
they secretly yearn for superiority and revenge. In the French Revolution of 1848, a woman coal-heaver is said to have remarked to a richly dressed lady: 'Yes, madam, everything's going to be equal now; I shall go in silks and you'll carry coal.'
The real reason French women don't get fat is not genetic, but cultural, and if the French subjected themselves to the American extremes of eating and dieting, the obesity problem in France would be much worse than what has struck America.
Every woman has to have something which singles her out, which catches the eyes, which makes her the center of attention. I am going to be french.
French women love bread and would never consider a life without carbs.
I've been acting a long time, and I can play a Cockney gangster or a womanizer in my sleep or standing on my head. But what I try to do is I try to find characters that are as far away from me as I possibly can and then make them real. A French Nazi is about as far away from me as I can possibly get without actually going to Mars or something.
The main problem in marriage is that, for a man, sex is a hunger-like eating.
If the man is hungry and can't get to a fancy French restaurant, he'll go to a hot dog stand. For a woman, what's important is love and romance.
It's funny because I think that both France and Britain are known for their distinctive styles and everyone says that France is so chic and elegant but I think more than that French women are renowned for dressing in what suits them.
I don't know who are the men and who are the women.
In French I used to say "je suis un femme et une homme." That is to say a feminine male and a masculine female. A she man and a he woman. What I am interested in is developing a singularity, which would be my own.
French women typically think about good things to eat.
American women typically worry about bad things to eat.
Making choices that are meaningful to you is the essence of the French woman's secret.
The French painter Rousseau was once asked why he put a naked woman on a red sofa in the middle of his jungle pictures. He answered, 'I needed a bit of red there.'
There are as many kinds of modesty as there are races.
To the English woman it is a duty; to the French woman a propriety.
To be with another woman, that is French. To be caught, that is American.
The French have a significant saying, that a woman who buys her complexion will sell it.
Of course there are fat French women. There are fat people everywhere.
In the end, the best part of the whole book [The Nightingale ] to me was the research, reading about the courageous, ordinary French women who put their lives on the line to save others. It was really inspirational.
She's the only woman I've ever had a sexual fantasy about.
With me, looks come first, and she's everything a woman should be. She's blonde and beautiful, she's got the most incredible legs - et cetera, et cetera. And she's French as well. (on Brigitte Bardot)
French women love to shop and prepare food.
They love to talk about what they have bought and made. It's a deeply natural love, but one that is erased in many other cultures. Most French women learn it from their mothers, some from their fathers. But if your parents aren't French, you can still learn it yourself.
French women don't have too many clothes - a few good pieces that last for a while and are classic and timeless.
French women eat and serve what's in season, for maximum flavor and value, and know availability does not equal quality.
The point of view foreigners will have of the film The Conquest isn't the same as the French public. What will interest American and international audiences is the love story between Nicolas and Cecelia that's a metaphor of today's occidental couple, namely the women in the shadows who carry their husbands into the spotlight, but the man is so absorbed with work so the woman leaves him for another man.
There are jobs that can be done equally well by men or by women and that finally you can't see a difference. But from the moment that you involve yourself fully in writing a novel, for example, or an essay, then you are involved as a woman, in the same way that you can't deny your nationality - you are French, you are a man, you are a woman... all this passes into the writing.
I saw this French woman, this English man in Italy.
It was a film [Certified Copy] I knew well, but I had already seen it, and I was familiar with it, and I had no feeling of anxiety or responsibility toward it.
I've never had help from anyone, ever.
I've never had this great director who saw themselves in me, because I'm a French woman in Hollywood. Who could identify with me as a successful director in Hollywood? Nobody. And the few people who could have been mentors, instead they just stole my ideas.
Gregory Peck was so charismatic. I saw a woman fall down - fall down! - when she saw him in a restaurant. And Brando. We were in London, and by then he was about 380 pounds. There was a gorgeous waitress, and off he went, in direct competition with me for this young girl's attention, speaking French, making her blush.
There was a French activist and writer, Simone de Beauvoir, who said, 'You are not born woman. You become one' ... Words I live by.
French women don't eat Wonder Bread.
During the election people from visible minorities stood as candidates on both the left and the right. And only one African woman was elected in a very left-wing constituency in Paris. The French don't seem to be ready to elect people from a visible minority. So maybe this society is not ready to have a woman from a foreign background in this important post. That really surprised us, because we thought we had evolved.
Even if I'm in Japan and I don't speak Japanese and the woman facing me doesn't speak French but she's dressed in Rykiel, and she recognizes me, then we have a common language right away.
American women often fall into the trap of, "Oh, these are my weekend clothes.
These are my work clothes. This is what I wear at night." It's so old-fashioned. The French are not afraid of their luxury. Americans can be so puritanical and think, "That's my special-occasion bag." Whereas, for a French woman, it's her everyday bag.
A French woman is a perfect architect in dress: she never, with Gothic ignorance, mixes the orders; she never tricks out a snobby Doric shape with Corinthian finery; or, to speak without metaphor, she conforms to general fashion only when it happens not to be repugnant to private beauty.
I never thought that I would have to play an Indian, well half French, but an Indian woman in my life.