Quotes from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“Making choices that are meaningful to you is the essence of the French woman's secret.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“We can't imagine anything more boring than to live with someone who doesn't care about food or eating or sharing meals.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“Learn to say no, with an eye to saying yes to something else.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“Expose them {your kids} to the widest variety of vegetables and fruits, showing them how good things can be in season. Tasteless fruits and vegetables won't win them over for life.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“~....value simplicity in all things, never serve any aperitif but Champagne. Hard liguor requires a bar, special paraphernalia, and a variety of glasses, as well as messy shaking or stirring. More important, it numbs more than it tickles the taste buds. When you've spent time and money preparing delicious food for your guests, the last thing you want is to render them unable to taste it. That will eliminate one of the most important topics of conversation!~”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“French women typically think about good things to eat. American women typically worry about bad things to eat.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“~There are no recipes, only ingredients~”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“French women love bread and would never consider a life without carbs.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“French women eat and serve what's in season, for maximum flavor and value, and know availability does not equal quality.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“French women don't eat Wonder Bread.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“A meal that can be packed and frozen and thawed is nothing you should desire--much less teach your kids to want.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“You owe it to your loved ones as well as yourself to know and pursue your pleasures.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“French women know one can go far with a great haircut, a bottle of champagne, and a divine perfume.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“For this reason, three months is the usual time to find your way. But you must enjoy the ride.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“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.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“If my fellow Americans could adopt even a fraction of the French attitude about food and life (don't worry, you don't have to sign on to the politics, too), managing weight would cease to be a terror, an obsession, and reveal its true nature as part of the art of living.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“Developing a program that will serve you a lifetime is not an instant fix. Attitude shifts take much longer, but when they take, they tend to take for good.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“Gastronomic boredom leads to lots of unhealthy eating. If you don’t make improvisation and experimentation part of your eating life, you are sure to find yourself in an eating rut.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“Give us being and feeling over having any day.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“On the whole, “offenders” are foods we tend to eat compulsively, with less actual pleasure than you might think. Often they are poor versions of something better.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“Any program that your mind interprets as punishment is one your mind is bound to rebel against.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“I offer the wisdom of the great American gastronome M.F.K. Fisher, who in The Art of Eating wrote, “No yoga exercise, no meditation in a chapel filled with music will rid you of your blues better than the humble task of making your own bread.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“Making choices that are meaningful to you is the essence of the French woman’s secret.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“Don't let a busy life or electronic communication gadgets be your excuse for excess solitude - it's a talent, but a rare one, to make yourself laugh.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“For many, the twenties seem like the time of infinite possibility, although in retrospect a woman will almost always idealize her thirties.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince is a book all French people know well. It can be read in an hour but is packed with timeless wisdom.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“Tout est question d’équilibre (Everything is a matter of balance):”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“As the French know well, ritual is how we give meaning to different aspects of being alive, including the most elemental: birth, marriage, death, and through it all, until the end, eating.”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

“you must understand there is nothing noble in failing to discover and cultivate your pleasures. (It will make you not only fat, but grouchy.)”
― Mireille Guiliano, quote from French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

Video

About the author

Popular quotes

“I don't know what's happening to me," she says, blinking through a veil of tears as she looks everywhere but at me. "I don't think I can do this anymore."
My heart plummets inside my chest, my lips still hovering over hers, my hands on her waist "do what anymore?" I don't want the answer, don't want to hear what follows my question, don't want to lose her.
"Fight it." Tears are still flowing from her eyes, but I think she stop crying. She sucks and several breaths when she looks at me, her eyes are clear that I anticipated. She's scared shitless - that's clear - but it's like she stop fighting the fear, giving into it instead.
Her lips apart and I'm a stop whatever she's about to say, silence her with my lips, but I don't, forcing myself to hear, needing to know what's got all worked up.
"I think I'm in love with you," she says, her chest heaving with every ravenous breath she takes, yet her voice is astonishingly even and she manages to maintain my gaze.
My voice however is the exact opposite of even, coming out all high-pitched like I'm a thirteen year old and going through puberty all over again. "What?"
She sucks and a breath, then releases is slowly, the fear in her eyes subsiding, as if she just won it. "I think I'm in love with you..." She bites on your lips and shakes her head. "No...I don't think. I know."
I gradually process her words and the full extent of what she's saying. I think I'd honestly believed that she might never say them, that this love thing was going to be a one-way street. Hearing her say it... I don't even know how to describe it. It's like my entire life of associated the word with hatred. Every time my mother said it, it felt like she was trying to take something from me and it made me hate her and myself-Love equaled hate for me. But hearing it from Violet's lips, seeing that look in her eyes, the one I've never seen from anyone, is so different. She's not taking something for me right now, she's giving me something.
She's giving me everything.”
― Jessica Sorensen, quote from The Certainty of Violet & Luke

“Is this Christian charity as it’s practiced in Bern?” He stood up, rapping his head against the low ceiling. “The Church has become a more … exclusive club since the founder’s day, it’s clear. No doubt the Devil is more hospitable.”
― Tim Powers, quote from The Stress of Her Regard

“Before Beth could warn the dude of the danger, Nicola elbowed him with that special touch of hers. His cheeks puffed out, his brow dropped down, and he doubled over. Not turning her head, she gave Beth a roll of her eyes. “I tried to say ‘go away’ politely.”
― Cristin Harber, quote from Hart Attack

“Pain is what hurts you. Fear is what never lets you forget about it.”
― Dan Waldschmidt, quote from Edgy Conversations: How Ordinary People Can Achieve Outrageous Success

“The depression was the great leveler of mankind. From this I learned a lot about human nature. With survival foremost in each person's mind, jealousy, envy and cowardice became apparent in our small community. Soup”
― quote from Outcry - Holocaust memoirs

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.