Parisian Culture Quotes

The first thing to be done in Paris is always to send for a tailor, a perukemaker and a shoemaker, for this nation has established such a domination over fashion that neither clothes, wigs nor shoes made in any other place will do in Paris.

France is France and a grand place for Frenchman.

The only street I like is Rue Honore de Balzac, because 'Balzac' sound so gay, and I love my gays. I might like Parisians more if they named their streets only for gay icons, like Rue Liza Minnelli or Rue Bette Midler or, my favorite, Rue McClanahan.

No academy could have given me all I discovered by getting my teeth into the exhibitions, the shop windows, and the museums of Paris . Beginning with the market - where, for lack of money, I bought only a piece of a long cucumber - the workman in his blue overall, the most ardent followers of Cubism , everything showed a definite feeling for proportion, clarity, an accurate sense of form, of a more painterly kind of painting, even in the canvases of second-rate artists.

In Paris, I was really singing for the sake of living. But eventually people said, 'Keep going; you've got a great voice,' and I started having confidence in my voice all of a sudden. That's when I started creating my own music.

The bohemian life that reigned in Paris until the end of the '50s is gone. The artists had more time to think, to reflect; success didn't come so suddenly.

In Paris, I will be able to learn and improve while winning.

I was in Paris for nine years, starting in '98. One of the great things when I was first there were these wonderful CD collections, selling for almost nothing. For ten euros, you'd get three CDs of all the Gershwin songs.

It is perfectly possible to be enamoured of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French.

I have never hidden my love of Paris, even though Monaco is still 'my' team.

I like spending time at home. In Paris, people drop by and have a bite to eat, or they drop by and watch Friends on TV. I take my dog to the office there, and I walk to work sometimes.

Naturally, I’ve always been mad about clothes. You don’t get born in Paris to forget about clothes for a minute.

I absorbed as many Impressionist paintings as I could, in Parisian museums and in many museums in the United States and in books, looking for clues to architecture, clothing, settings.

As a kid, I wanted to be part of the Lost Generation who came to France.

When you live in Paris, and fashion is such a point of pride for the French, it's always around and you're very much exposed to it from an early age. It was always something I knew about and really liked.

Good talkers are only found in Paris.

When I'm in Paris, my favorite market is the Marche Raspail on the Left Bank.

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 always dreamed of working in Paris, of going to the Coupole and slapping Picasso or Giacometti on the shoulder.

Outside of Paris, there is no hope for the cultured.

It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist's studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.

You come to Paris, you get true originality, and it's wonderful.

Of course, there's no reason that Paris should have decent Mexican food. It's a silly expectation - there's a Mexican population in Paris, but they're not exactly traveling there from across the border. Paris also doesn't do Peruvian all that well, either.

That certain snobbery of certainly the Parisian - combined with a complete denial of your historical legacy, is just awful. That's a funny thing about France. Saul Bellow wrote somewhere that he saw right through the French. He lived there. He wrote The Adventures of Augie March in Paris, and there's no one better than him to say what's unbearable about the French.

I live in the Dark Ages, the 17th century. Actually, I would have loved to be in Paris in the early 20th century when the Ballets Russes were there and Chanel was designing.