P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

Now, if you are like me - if you are like practically anybody in America - then you probably hold some negative opinions about the French, based upon movies, rumors, recent headlines, unfortunate run-ins with Parisian waiters, or... you know... all that unpleasantness surrounding the Vichy regime.

The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth.

When I was young, I used to expect Parisians to wear little black berets, to bicycle about with strings of onions around their necks, and to brandish long sticks of bread, just like they used to do in school textbooks.

It's true that French are not very sophisticated in the sense that they don't dress up for dinners. They are not like Americans, where they are always perfect - the girls are not very sporty; they don't take care of themselves as much as Americans, who always have very white teeth and are so fit.

One of the maddening things about being a foreigner in France is that hardly anyone in the rest of the world knows what's really happening here. They think Paris is a socialist museum where people are exceptionally good at eating small bits of chocolate and tying scarves.

I love coffee in a cup, little fuzzy pups, bourbon in a glass, and grass.

You're not really drinking coffee unless you drink it black, don't you think? Oh, no? You like to monkey with it?

France? I don't want to be anti-French but there isn't a more unattractive group of people on the streets.

The French are not rude. They just happen to hate you. But that is no reason to bypass this beautiful country, whose master chefs have a well-deserved worldwide reputation for trying to trick people into eating snails. Nobody is sure how this got started. Probably a couple of French master chefs were standing around one day, and they found a snail, and one of them said: 'I bet that if we called this something like 'escargot,' tourists would eat it.' Then they had hearty laugh, because 'escargot' is the French word for 'fat crawling bag of phlegm.'

The national characteristics... the restless metaphysical curiosity, the tenderness of good living and the passionate individualism. This is the invisible constant in a place with which the ordinary tourist can get in touch just by sitting quite quietly over a glass of wine in a Paris bistro.

If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn't be worth living.

A man should be able to have a whiskey in the evening without jeopardizing his health

France is the most civilized country there is.

The French are consistent.

France has been mired in people's minds for years. In reality, our children are taught that they have every reason to criticize her, to see only the darkest historical aspects.

When a Frenchman reads of the garden of Eden, I do not doubt but he concludes it was something approaching to that of Versailles, with clipped hedges, berceaus, and trellis work.

The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore.

You may hear from my fabulous accent that I'm French!

You can be an American or an Englishman or Canadian and be a Parisian. It's a very admirable culture, and people want to identify with it.

I'm a whiskey drinker, but Cesaro is a coffee drinker.

I shouldn't say it, but I found that the French can be the most arrogant people in the world if they want to be.

I know the French mentality.

I like whiskey and I like vodka, too. And beer.

Being a France is great from a heritage standpoint.

The French always seemed to be so chic. The food was better, the clothes were better, the makeup was better, the hair was better. Everything was better in France.