320 pages
Rating: (12.3K votes)
“It is a bitter-sweet thing, knowing two cultures. Once you leave your birthplace nothing is ever the same.”
― quote from Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris
“Such is the nature of an expatriate life. Stripped of romance, perhaps that's what being an expat is all about: a sense of not wholly belonging. [...] The insider-outsider dichotomy gives life a degree of tension. Not of a needling, negative variety but rather a keep-on-your-toes sort of tension that can plunge or peak with sudden rushes of love or anger. Learning to recognise and interpret cultural behaviour is a vital step forward for expats anywhere, but it doesn't mean that you grow to appreciate all the differences.”
― quote from Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris
“The trail of lime trees outside our building is still a public loo. …where else are they supposed to go to the toilet in a city where public toilets are about as common as UFO sightings?” (pp.281-82)”
― quote from Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris
“I know of no other place that is so fascinating yet so frustrating, so aware of the world and its own place within it but at the same time utterly insular. A country touched by nostalgia, with a past so great - so marked by brilliance and achievement - that French people today seem both enriched and burdened by it. France is like a maddening, moody lover who inspires emotional highs and lows. One minute it fills you with a rush of passion, the next you're full of fury, itching to smack the mouth of some sneering shopkeeper or smug civil servant. Yes, it's a love-hate relationship.”
― quote from Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris
“You'd think the sight of beautiful Place Vendôme would lift my spirits but oddly the arc of jewellery - so obviously beyond the means of a jobless person like me - only depresses me more. I plod on feeling confused, guilty even, that I should feel unhappy in a place that looks like paradise.”
― quote from Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris
“I met Brian soon after he had signed the Beatles. He was charming, polite, well spoken and I liked him. He accepted that I was John’s girlfriend, but he told John that it would be better if all girlfriends kept a low profile. I didn’t mind because I had no interest in the limelight. As long as I could be”
― Cynthia Lennon, quote from John
“I very sorry now, Missy Edith—but cat bite me," said Pablo. "Well, if pussy did, it didn't hurt you much; and what did I tell you this morning out of the Bible?—that you must forgive them who behave ill to you." "Yes, Missy Edith, you tell me all that, and so I do; I forgive pussy 'cause she bite me, but I kick her for it." "That's not forgiveness, is it, Edward? You should have forgiven it at once, and not kicked it at all." "Miss Edith, when pussy bite me, pussy hurt me, make me angry, and I give her a kick; then I think what you tell me, and I do as you tell me. I forgive pussy with all my heart.”
― Frederick Marryat, quote from The Children of the New Forest
“Why, I don’t exactly know about that,’ replied Bob Sawyer. ‘I am—’ ‘Not buff, Mr. Pickwick,’ interrupted Pott, drawing back his chair, ‘your friend is not buff, sir?’ ‘No, no,’ rejoined Bob, ‘I’m a kind of plaid at present; a compound of all sorts of colours.’ ‘A waverer,’ said Pott solemnly, ‘a waverer. I should like to show you a series of eight articles, Sir, that have appeared in the Eatanswill Gazette. I think I may venture to say that you would not be long in establishing your opinions on a firm and solid blue basis, sir.’ ‘I dare say I should turn very blue, long before I got to the end of them,’ responded Bob.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from The Complete Works of Charles Dickens
“Desire that your life count for something great! Long for your life to have eternal significance. Want this! Don’t coast through life without a passion.”
― John Piper, quote from Don't Waste Your Life
“Yes, I'm glum, I'm continually closed. I often want to leave society. I may also do good to people, but often I don't see the slightest reason for doing good to them. And people are not at all so beautiful that they should be cared for so much. Why don’t they come forward directly and openly, and why is it so necessary that I should go and foist myself on them? That’s what I asked myself.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Adolescent
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