A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to take it off of you.
Francoise Sagan
To jealousy, nothing is more frightful than laughter.
I always believe things are going to work out.
Art must take reality by surprise.
Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.
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.
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.
Marriage? It's like asparagus eaten with vinaigrette or hollandaise, a matter of taste but of no importance.
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.
I've tried very hard and I've never found any resemblance between the people I know and the people in my novels.
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.
I've read Proust and Stendhal. That keeps you in your place.
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.
One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter.
I had a strong desire to write and some free time.
Every little girl knows about love. It is only her capacity to suffer because of it that increases.
The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read.
Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. 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.
After Proust, there are certain things that simply cannot be done again. He marks off for you the boundaries of your talent.
For me writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz.
It would be bad form for me to describe people I don't know and don't understand.
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.
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.
