Quotes from Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris

“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

Popular quotes

“I've a pocket full of dreams to sell," said Teddy, whimsically,... "What d'ye lack? What d'ye lack? A dream of success--a dream of adventure--a dream of the sea--a dream of the woodland--any kind of a dream you want at reasonable prices, including one or two unique little nightmares. What will you give me for a dream?”
― L.M. Montgomery, quote from Emily Climbs

“The zoos are full and the prisons overflowing. My, my. How the world so dearly loves a cage.” She”
― Colin Higgins, quote from Harold and Maude

“And all those boys of Europe born in those times, and thereabouts those times, Russian, French, Belgian, Serbian, Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, Italian, Prussian, German, Austrian, Turkish – and Canadian, Australian, American, Zulu, Gurkha, Cossack, and all the rest – their fate was written in a ferocious chapter in the book of life, certainly. Those millions of mothers and their million gallons of mother’s milk, millions of instances of small talk and baby talk, beatings and kisses, ganseys and shoes, piled up in history in great ruined heaps, with a loud and broken music, human stories told for nothing, for ashes, for death’s amusement, flung on the mighty scrapheap of souls, all those million boys in all their humours to be milled by the millstones of a coming war.”
― Sebastian Barry, quote from A Long Long Way

“After they left, Emma returned to her Jasper-burger consumption with gusto. She’d asked Lisa once to find out the recipe for their seasoning mix, but Kevin wouldn’t give it up. Plus, as Lisa had pointed out, it wouldn’t do Emma any good to have it since she couldn’t cook worth a damn, anyway.
“So about what I said before,” Sean said after he’d wolfed down his food, “about not wanting them to know we’ve had sex. It’s not that I’m trying to hide it, I just…”
“Don’t want them to know.”
“Yeah.”
“That makes sense.”
His face brightened. “Really?”
“No.”
“Damn.” He’d finished his beer, so he took a swig off the glass of water she’d requested with her meal.
“Under normal circumstances, I’d want everybody to know we’re sleeping together. Trust me. I’d put a sign on my front lawn.”
“But these aren’t normal circumstances.”
“Not even in the ballpark. I have this bet with my brothers I’d last the whole month and I don’t want to listen to them gloat.” Of course he’d have a bet with his brothers. Such a guy thing to do. “But it’s more about the women.”
“The women?”
“In my family, I mean. Aunt Mary, especially. They might start thinking it’s more than it is. Getting ideas about us, if you know what I mean.”
Emma ate her last French fry and pushed her plate away. “So we have to pretend we’re madly in love and engaged…while pretending we’re not having sex.”
“Told you it complicates things.”
“I’m going to need a color-coded chart to keep track of who thinks what.”
He grinned and pulled his Sharpie out of his pocket. “I could make Sticky notes.”
The man loved sticky notes. He stuck them on everything. A note on the front of the microwave complaining about the disappearance of the last bag of salt-and-vinegar chips. (Emma had discovered during a particularly rough self-pity party that any chips will do, even if they burn your tongue.) A note on the back of the toilet lid telling her she used girlie toilet paper, whatever that meant.
He liked leaving them on the bathroom mirror, too. Stop cleaning my sneakers. I’m trying to break them in. Her personal favorite was If you buy that cheap beer because it’s on sale again, I’ll piss in your mulch pile. But sometimes they were sweet. Thank you for doing my laundry. And…You make really good grilled cheese sandwiches. That one had almost made her cry.”
― Shannon Stacey, quote from Yours to Keep

“There was something dead in my heart.
I tried to figure out what it was by the strength of the smell. I knew that it was not a lion or a sheep or a dog. Using logical deduction, I came to the conclusion that it was a mouse.
I had a dead mouse in my heart.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from The Tokyo-Montana Express

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