Francoise Gilot Quotes

Every time I change wives I should burn the last one. That way I'd be rid of them. They wouldn't be around to complicate my existence. Maybe, that would bring back my youth, too. You kill the woman and you wipe out the past she represents. ~ Pablo Picasso

Don't imagine you could ever take my place.' I told her I had never wanted to; I only wanted to occupy the one that was empty. ~ Francoise Gilot

My grandmother's death had given me a heightened sense of individual solitude, of each one of us walking towards his own death, with no one able to help us or hold us back. ~ Francoise Gilot

One day when I went to see him (Picasso), we were looking at the dust dancing in a ray of sunlight that slanted in through one of the high windows. He said to me, 'Nobody has any real importance to me. As far as I'm concerned, other people are like those little grains of dust floating in the sunlight. It takes only a push of the broom and out they go.'I told him I had often noticed in his dealings with others that he considered the rest of the world only little grains of dust. But I said, as it happened, I was a little grain of dust gifted with autonomous movement and who didn't therefore need a broom. I could go out by myself. ~ Francoise Gilot

To change your mind about something is always difficult. I think that people who are big enough to admit they were wrong can be counted on your fingers. ~ Francoise Gilot

The heart of the problem, I soon came to understand, was that with Pablo there must always be a victor and a vanquished. I could not be satisfied with being a victor, nor, I think, could anyone who is emotionally mature. There was nothing gained by being vanquished either, because with Pablo, the moment you were vanquished he lost all interest. Since I loved him, I couldn't afford to be vanquished. What does one do in a dilemma like that? ~ Francoise Gilot

It's ludicrous to even talk about (Marquis) de Sade, let alone indulge in all that, when people are being tortured and suffering for real, not for sexual games. I have no interest either in being a victim or in turning others into victims. ~ Francoise Gilot

For me, style is essentially doing things well. If you want to be outrageous, be outrageous with style. If you want to be restrained, be restrained with style. One can't specifically define style. It's like the perfume to a flower. It's a quality you can't analyze. ~ Francoise Gilot

He told me that from now on, everything I did and everything he did was of the utmost importance: any word spoken, the slightest gesture, would take on a meaning, and everything that happened between us would change us continually. 'For that reason,'he said,'I wish I were able to suspend time at this moment and keep things exactly at this point, because I feel this instant is a true beginning. We have a definite but unknown quantity of experience at our disposal. As soon as the hourglass is turned, the sand will begin to run out and once it starts, it cannot stop until it's all gone. That's why I wish I could hold it back at the start. We should make a minimum of gestures, pronounce a minimum of words, even see each other as seldom as possible, if that would prolong things. We don't know how much of everything we have ahead of us so we have to take the greatest precautions not to destroy the beauty of what we have. Everything exists in limited quantity-especially happiness. If a love is to come into being, it is all written down somewhere, and also its duration and content. If you could arrive at the complete intensity the first day, it would be ended the first day. And so if it's something you want so much that you'd like to have it prolonged in time, you must be extremely careful not to make the slightest excessive demand that might prevent it from developing to the greatest extent over the longest period...If the wings of the butterfly are to keep their sheen, you mustn't ~ Francoise Gilot

Everybody has the same energy potential. The average person wastes his in a dozen little ways. I bring mine to bear on one thing only: my paintings, and everything else is sacrificed to it ... myself included. ~ Pablo Picasso

What interests me is to set up what you might call the rapport de grand écart - the most unexpected relationship possible between the things I want to speak about, because there is a certain difficulty in establishing relationships in just that way, and in that difficulty there is an interest, and in that interest there is a certain tension and for me that tension is a lot more important than the stable equilibrium of harmony, which doesn't interest me at all. Reality must be torn apart in every sense of the word. What people forget is that everything is unique. Nature never produces the same thing twice. Hence my stress on seeking the rapport de grand écart: a small head on a large body; a large head on a small body. I want to draw the mind in the direction it's not used to and wake it up. I want to help the viewer discover something he wouldn't have discovered without me. That's why I stress the dissimilarity, for example, between the left eye and the right eye. A painter shouldn't make them so similar. They're just not that way. So my purpose is to set things in movement, to provoke this movement by contradictory tensions, opposing forces, and in that tension or opposition, to find the moment which seems the most interesting to me. ~ Francoise Gilot

I'm not going to talk about Picasso. I have done my duty to those memories. I have had a great career as an artist myself, you know. I'm not here just because I've spent time with Picasso. ~ Francoise Gilot

Pablo's many stories and reminiscences about Olga and Marie-Thérese and Dora Maar, as well as their continuing presence just offstage in our own life together, gradually made me realize that he had a kind of Bluebeard complex that made him want to cut off the heads of all women he had collected in his private museum. But he didn't cut the heads entirely off. He preferred to have life go on and to have all those women who had shared his life at one moment or another still letting out little peeps and cries of joy or pain and making a few gestures like disjointed dolls, just to prove there was some life left in them, that it hung by a thread, and that he held the other end of the thread. From time to time they would provide a humorous or dramatic or sometimes tragic side to things, and that was all grist to his mill. ~ Francoise Gilot

I paint the way some people write their autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages of my journal, and as such they are valid. The future will choose the pages it prefers. It's not up to me to make the choice. I have the impression that the time is speading on past me more and more rapidly. I'm like a river that rolls on, dragging with it the trees that grow too close to its banks or dead calves one might have thrown into it or any kind of microbes that develop in it. I carry all that along with me and go on. It's the movement of painting that interests me, the dramatic movement from one effort to the next, even if those efforts are perhaps not pushed to their ultimate end. In some of my paintings I can say with certainty that the effort has been brought to its full weight and its conclusion, because there I have been able to stop the flow of time around me. I have less and less time, and yet I have more and more to say, and what I have to say is,increasingly, something about what goes on in the movement of my thought. I've reached the moment, you see, when the movement of my thought interests me more than the thought itself. ~ Francoise Gilot

No one is indispensable to anyone else. You imagine you're necessary to him or that he will be very unhappy if you leave him, but I'm sure that if you do, within three months he will have fitted another face into your role and you'll see that no one is suffering because of your absence. You must feel free to do whatever feels best to you. Being someone's nurse is no way to live unless you're unable to do anything else. You have to say something on your own and you ought to be thinking, first and foremost, about that. ~ Francoise Gilot

You're trying to swim upstream against the current. What is there about the natural flow of the river of life that has shocked you so strongly that you should want to swim against the current, even against time? You ought to know you're lost even before you begin. I don't understand you but I love you and I suppose you are obeying the law of your being. ~ Francoise Gilot

You have to admit that most women who do something with their lives have been disliked by almost everyone. ~ Francoise Gilot

Since I realized that he (Picasso) lived in a self-enclosed world and that his solitude was therefore total, I wanted to explore my own solitude. ~ Francoise Gilot

I really think that if I had met Picasso during peacetime, nothing would have happened. ~ Francoise Gilot

Imagination is more powerful than the fear of what would other think about ourselves ~ Francoise Sagan

Curiosity is the beginning of wisdom. ~ Francoise Sagan

It's not worth loving... it needs to be loved ~ Francoise Sagan

Happiness is like a flat plain without landmarks. ~ Francoise Sagan

I went to Luc's without much enthusiasm and even with some trepidation: I was going to have to chat, be friendly and project an image of myself to them. I would have preferred to have lunch on my own, twirl a jar of mustard round between my fingers, and be vague, vague, completely vague . . . ~ Francoise Sagan

...life is a bitter joke, a prank. Accursed, drama and joke, which makes it funny. A laughable tragedy, that's what the life is. ~ Francoise Sagan

Philosophy may raise us above grandeur, but nothing can elevate us above the ennui which accompanies it. ~ Francoise D'Aubigne, Marquise De Maintenon

Il arrive un âge où ils ne sont plus séduisants, ni «en forme», comme on dit. Ils ne peuvent plus boire et ils pensent encore aux femmes; seulement ils sont obligés de les payer, d'accepter des quantités de petites compromissions pour échapper à leur solitude. Ils sont bernés, malheureux. C'est ce moment qu'ils choisissent pour devenir sentimentaux et exigeants… J'en ai vu beaucoup devenir ainsi des sortes d'épaves.

"A time comes when they are no longer attractive or in good form. They can't drink any more, and they still hanker after women, only then they have to pay and make compromises in order to escape from their loneliness: they have become just figures of fun. They grow sentimental and hard to please. I have
seen many who have gone the same way. ~ Francoise Sagan

Living in the bush teaches you that life is a magnificent cycle of birth and death, and nothing showed me that more powerfully than when Nana gave birth to a beautiful baby boy around the time of Lawrence's passing.

Of course I named him Lolo. ~ Francoise Malby Anthony

The artist by his work is known. ~ Francoise-Marguerite De Sevigne

I don't think there's any intrinsic difference between a lover and a husband ... If I were cynical, I would say that a woman should have both a good husband and a lover. But I'm not cynical so I'll just say that a woman should have a lover who's a good husband and a husband who's a good lover, perhaps both. ~ Francoise Sagan

The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our work and find in it our pleasure. ~ Francoise Bertaut De Motteville

Really, one has some friends, and when one comes to think about it it is impossible to tell how one ever became friendly with them. ~ Francoise Mallet-Joris

Advisors are generally brilliant theoreticians but wretched practitioners. ~ Francoise Giroud

My love of pleasure seems to be the only consistent side of my character. Is it because I have not read enough? ~ Francoise Sagan

God help us!' Josée thought. 'Here we have one of those regular biblical women! She thinks that a baby will win back her man. ~ Francoise Sagan

I saw an exquisite pink and blue shell on the sea-bottom. I dove for it, and held it, smooth and hollow in my hand all the morning. I decided it was a lucky charm, and that I would keep it. I am surprised that I have not lost it, for I lose everything. Today it is still pink and warm as it lies in my palm, and makes me feel like crying. ~ Francoise Sagan

Three-fourths of all marriages are unhappy. ~ Francoise D'Aubigne, Marquise De Maintenon

Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance. ~ Francoise Sagan

We always want someone we've treated badly to be gay. It's less upsetting. ~ Francoise Sagan

...at least, while the man is young, in this long cheating, which presents life, nothing seems desperately preferable than recklessness ~ Francoise Sagan

I had a strong desire to write and some free time. ~ Francoise Sagan

She'd like to be indispensable; that's what every woman wants ... ~ Francoise Sagan

People respect unhappiness and find it especially hard to forgive success. ~ Francoise Sagan

For me writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. ~ Francoise Sagan

The weight of money stops us to reach heights. It's a good servant, but a terrible master. ~ Francoise Sagan

All great, simple images reveal a psychic state. The house, even more than the landscape, is a "psychic state," and even when reproduced as it appears from the outside, it bespeaks intimacy. Psychologists generally, and Francoise Minkowska in particular, together with those whom she has succeeded interesting in the subject, have studied the drawing of houses made by children, and even used them for testing. Indeed, the house-test has the advantage of welcoming spontaneity, for many children draw a house spontaneously while dreaming over their paper and pencil. To quote Anne Balif: "Asking a child to draw his house is asking him to reveal the deepest dream shelter he has found for his happiness. If he is happy, he will succeed in drawing a snug, protected house which is well built on deeply-rooted foundations." It will have the right shape, and nearly always there will be some indication of its inner strength. In certain drawings, quite obviously, to quote Mme. Balif, "it is warm indoors, and there is a fire burning, such a big fire, in fact, that it can be seen coming out of the chimney." When the house is happy, soft smoke rises in gay rings above the roof.

If the child is unhappy, however, the house bears traces of his distress. In this connection, I recall that Francoise Minkowska organized an unusually moving exhibition of drawings by Polish and Jewish children who had suffered the cruelties of the German occupation during the last war. One child, who had been ~ Gaston Bachelard

To some women nothing fits better than the onset of ambition. Love makes them passive ~ Francoise Sagan

I've read Proust and Stendhal. That keeps you in your place. ~ Francoise Sagan

Autonomy is something fundamental that your child needs. (Francoise Dolto said that by age six, a child should be able to do everything at home that concerns him.) ~ Pamela Druckerman

The number of times she'd said "wait and see" to herself in her thirty years of existence was way beyond counting. ~ Francoise Sagan

For what Luc was in fact proposing was just a game, an enticing game, but, even so, one that could destroy my undoubtedly quite genuine feelings for Bertrand; and it could destroy something else within me, something ill-defined but fiercely felt, which, whether I liked it or not, was opposed to transience. Or, at the very least, to the intentionally transient nature of what Luc what was offering. And then, even if I was able to conceive of any passion or liaison as being short-lived, I couldn't accept in advance that it had to be that way. Like any individual for whom life is a series of charades, I could bear the charades only if they were written by me, and by me alone. ~ Francoise Sagan

The fame isn't something that comes up suddenly,; it comes in slowly. It comes out in a shape of fact, which, whoever is concerned, considers it significant ~ Francoise Sagan

How can someone love a women and not appreciate her, worship her and not believe in it, be crazy for her and not admire her? It can, surely! That's even more convenient, simpler. ~ Francoise Sagan

I won't teach you to be unhappy. At least not intentionally. On the contrary, I'll strive not to make unhappy. ~ Francoise Sagan

What we love we may also despise. ~ Francoise Sagan

Life has confirmed for me the thoughts and impressions I had when I was 18, as if it was all intuition. ~ Francoise Sagan

Know this, sir, that for one women a specified time is a specified time. After a while sometimes is still time. But before a specified time there's never a time ~ Francoise Sagan

We are torn between the craving to know and the despair of having known. ~ Francoise Sagan

Look at how beautiful this ink is. Now do you understand why I needed clear water? Water is the brightness of the day and the whiteness of the paper. Black is the velvet of night and the satiny ink of the paintbrush. If you know how to make ink correctly, you will never again be afraid of nightmares." Hokusai (The Old Man Mad About Drawing) ~ Francoise Place

The happiness of people who are in love and who are loved shows in their faces. They have an expression that's at once very far away and very much part of the present. ~ Francoise Sagan

Sin is not so sinful as hypocrisy. ~ Francoise D'Aubigne, Marquise De Maintenon

You should celebrate the end of a love affair as they celebrate death in New Orleans, with songs, laughter, dancing and a lot of wine. ~ Francoise Sagan

There was a French singer, Francoise Hardy - I used to look at her pictures and try to dress like her. ~ Carly Simon