You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.
Time spent with a cat is never wasted.
Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it." (Casual Chance, 1964)
There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.
There are no ordinary cats.
Hope costs nothing.
Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.
In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.
No one asked you to be happy. Get to work.
What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.
I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer.
Be happy. It's one way of being wise.
Look for a long time at what pleases you, and longer still at what pains you...
If he's getting married, he's not longer interesting.
When she raises her eyelids, it's as if she were taking off all her clothes.
The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.
I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually.
I want nothing from love, in short, but love.
Total absence of humor renders life impossible.
Music is love in search of a word.
To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.
I have found my voice again and the art of using it...
So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.
To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.
Then, bidding farewell to The Knick-Knack, I went to collect the few personal belongings which, at that time, I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.
If I can’t have too many truffles, I’ll do without truffles.
Live in the moment!
Youth is not the age to seduce, it's the age to be seduced.
It is the image in the mind that links us to our lost treasures; but it is the loss that shapes the image, gathers the flowers, weaves the garland.
You don't think before you do something foolish. You do your thinking afterwards.
That lovely voice; how I should weep for joy if I could hear it now!
The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike.
Beautiful December grapes, blue as plums, every grape a little skinful of sweet, tasteless water
The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.
Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight. For it is the only suffering that we endure without ever becoming used to it.
I liked being with him, as I like being with swift animals who are motionless when at rest.
A few days later, I found my mother beneath the tree, motionless with excitement, her head turned toward the heavens in which she would allow human religions no place.
I have no equals, I have only my fellow wayfarers.
They exchanged looks full of mischievous security.
I heard on their lips the language of passion, of betrayal and jealousy, and sometimes despair - languages with which I was all too familiar.
Love is not an honorable sentiment
The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.
At the top of the iron staircase leading to the stage, the good, dry, dusty warmth wraps me round like a comfortable dirty cloak.
People who are perfectly sane and happy don't make good literature, alas.
Don't you think, that there are very few men who know, without raising their voice or changing their tone, to say...what has to be said?
Don't ever wear artistic jewelry; it wrecks a woman's reputation
As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow.
There is no doubt that, if ever my heart were to call my master Chance by another name, I should make an excellent Catholic.
... what an ennobling sadness you lent to my evening's enjoyment.
Curious how people can go on doing the same thing day after day!
Writing only leads to more writing.
Don't cudgel your brains over my little problems.
Love...is also a form of poison, for to fall in love is to want and to need everything necessary for survival from one all-powerful and barely differentiated Other.
![And since, through lack of vocation or from habit, [Julie] was prone to confuse pity with boredom, she felt herself practically a prisoner...](https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/images/quotes/colette-12428.jpg)
And since, through lack of vocation or from habit, [Julie] was prone to confuse pity with boredom, she felt herself practically a prisoner...
 noticed that I was prettier than I was at home. Thus do girls change color in the warmth of masculine desire, whether they are fifteen or thirty. ){kind=small}
...She (her mother) noticed that I was prettier than I was at home. Thus do girls change color in the warmth of masculine desire, whether they are fifteen or thirty.
My true friends always gave me this supreme proof of attachment: a spontaneous aversion to the men I loved.
Mothers sound so stupid when they praise their daughters to the skies.
My son, be rich and live your own life! Tell yourself that you're the incarnation of an ancient aristocracy. Model yourself on the feudal barons. You're a warrior
We all go through that. Everyone's feeling a little out of sorts. No one knows exactly where he stands. Work is a wonderful way of putting you on your feet again, old boy
Her nature is like a demonstrative cat's; she is delicate, acutely sensitive to cold, and incredibly caressing in her ways.
Trudno zadowolić jednocześnie wszystkich i samą siebie. Wolę zacząć od siebie...
The seventeenth, Desmond! Come along at once; everything's all right. We're going to buy a huge bracelet for my wife, an enormous cigarette-holder for Madame Peloux, and a tiny tie-pin for you
