La Femme Fatale Quotes

When my animal instincts desire the forbidden, I feel pleasure in seeking them without constrictions placed by laws, worldly or religious ~ Rochelle Magee

I suppose you could pass for a starlet. You do have that femme fatale air about you. Like you crush boys' dreams in your spare time. ~ Janette Rallison

She just stood there and looked at the empty highway, and you could almost tell how bored she was by the way she stood. ~ Clifton Adams

Elizabeth Taylor is pre-feminist woman. This is the source of her continuing greatness and relevance. She wields the sexual power that feminism cannot explain and has tried to destroy. Through stars like Taylor, we sense the world-disordering impact of legendary women like Delilah, Salome, and Helen of Troy. Feminism has tried to dismiss the femme fatale as a misogynist libel, a hoary clich?. But the femme fatale expresses women's ancient and eternal control of the sexual realm. The specter of the femme fatale stalks all men's relations with women. ~ Camille Paglia

Her smile cut sharper than a knife's edge. ~ Grace Curley

She looked like a vixen, and that's what she was; she had all the instincts of a female fox. She was the proverbial predatory female. She had what she wanted, now, and she was content. There was just the getting completely away with it that counted. ~ Gil Brewer

Blondes are the girlfriend, brunete is the femme fatale, but the heroine, she's the redheaded girl. ~ Marion Roach

I am cursed with a right leg that arouses the desire of any male dog that happens to be passing. I used to think that this only happened to me but I've discovered that many people have the same problem. They have a femme fatale limb. ~ Jasper Carrott

A femme fatale and a warrior princess. ~ Cassandra Clare

Cigarette kisses the flame. But the mouth kisses the woman. (Cigarette embrasse la flamme. - Mais la bouche embrasse la femme.) ~ Charles De Leusse

She thrust out her arms wide, in strange ritual of triumph, as Mimi Brissard had in Paris. She was a black, ominous death-cross against the starlight for a moment. Then she turned slowly, her eyes two green phosphorescent pools, toward where the helpless secret service man lay. ("I'm Dangerous Tonight") ~ Cornell Woolrich

Cherchez la femme, Bucky. Remember that. ~ James Ellroy

She looked slick as hell; polished, neat, and with that feminine deadliness that can drive you nuts. They work on it till they get complete control of the situation. There's no use trying to break them down. They've made it. ~ Gil Brewer

Mario, I wrote, to give myself courage, had not taken away the world, he had taken away only himself. And you are not a woman of thirty years ago. You are of today, take hold of today, don't regress, don't lose yourself, keep a tight grip. Above all, don't give into distracted or malicious or angry monologues. Eliminate the exclamation points. He's gone, you're still here. You'll no longer enjoy the gleam of his eyes, of his words, but so what? Organize your defenses, preserve your wholeness, don't let yourself break like an ornament, you're not a knickknack, no woman is a knickknack. La femme rompue, ah, rompue, the destroyed woman, destroyed, shit. My job, I thought, is to demonstrate that one can remain healthy. Demonstrate it to myself, no one else. If I am exposed to lizards, I will fight the lizards. If I am exposed to ants, I will fight the ants. If I am exposed to thieves, I will fight the thieves. If I am exposed to myself, I will fight myself. ~ Elena Ferrante

I always wanted to be a femme fatale. Even when I was a young girl, I never really wanted to be a girl. I wanted to be a woman. ~ Diane Von Furstenberg

Blow on, ye death fraught whirlwinds! blow,
Around the rocks, and rifted caves;
Ye demons of the gulf below!
I hear you, in the troubled waves.
High on this cliff, which darkness shrouds
In night's impenetrable clouds,
My solitary watch I keep,
And listen, while the turbid deep
Groans to the raging tempests, as they roll
Their desolating force, to thunder at the pole.

Eternal world of waters, hail!
Within thy caves my Lover lies;
And day and night alike shall fail
Ere slumber lock my streaming eyes.
Along this wild untrodden coast,
Heap'd by the gelid' hand of frost;
Thro' this unbounded waste of seas,
Where never sigh'd the vernal breeze;
Mine was the choice, in this terrific form,
To brave the icy surge, to shiver in the storm.

Yes! I am chang'd - My heart, my soul,
Retain no more their former glow.
Hence, ere the black'ning tempests roll,
I watch the bark, in murmurs low,
(While darker low'rs the thick'ning' gloom)
To lure the sailor to his doom;
Soft from some pile of frozen snow
I pour the syren-song of woe;
Like the sad mariner's expiring cry,
As, faint and worn with toil, he lays him down to die.

Then, while the dark and angry deep
Hangs his huge billows high in air ;
And the wild wind with awful sweep,
Howls in each fitful swell - beware!
Firm on the rent and crashing mast,
I ~ Anne Bannerman

Cherchez la femme" is good advice for investigative reporters. "Follow the money" is even better advice. ~ Ben Bradlee

Stained is about a lonely bookshop keeper, and her past comes back to haunt her. I play a femme fatale, schizophrenic serial killer. They offered me the part and I was like, "I'm just curious why you thought I would be perfect for this role," and the director (Karen Lam) said, "You have this look that, when you're smiling, you're really sweet, but when you're not smiling, you look like you could kill somebody." ~ Tinsel Korey

Well, I'm not at all like the tough, sexy femme fatale in Confidence but it's fun to play people who're really different from you, from different cultures and places. I suppose I'm a bit quieter than most of the people I play. ~ Rachel Weisz

A lui la foi, a' elle le doute, a' elle le fardeau le plus lourd: la femme ne souffre-t-elle pas toujours pour deux? For him, faith; for her, doubt and for her theheavier load: does not the woman always suffer for both? ~ Honore De Balzac

Beside her, her husband could only splutter, and he stopped even that when she half turned to flash him a smile - the instinctive, brilliant smile of a woman who knows what feeble creatures men can be. You couldn't learn to smile like that. It was something a woman either knew the minute she was born, or never knew at all. ("I'm Dangerous Tonight") ~ Cornell Woolrich

Velva's face glowed in the streetlight. "Sir Sun, don't you see? I am your violent violet. And you are mine. ~ Mav Skye

Men are the cause of women not loving one another.
[Fr., Les hommes sont la cause que les femmes ne s'aiment point.] ~ Jean De La Bruyere

Sometimes in life you meet a femme fatale and you can refuse them nothing they treat you like dirt but even the dirt they dish out has a taste you can resist?
From the novel 'Adventures of a Dark Duke: The Pin ~ Russell C. Brennan

I've been playing sexually aware women most of my life. At this point I expected to be playing moms and wives. It's exciting to play a femme fatale. ~ Kim Cattrall

Be dangerous, darling, for the whole world rises and falls at your feet. ~ Mav Skye

To be a femme fatale you don't have to be slinky and sensuous and disastrously beautiful, you just have to have the will to disturb. ~ Alice Munro

Don't make a career out of underestimating me." - Claire de Haven ~ James Ellroy

I guess I'm just not the film femme fatale type. I giggle too much. I have freckles and a turned-up nose, and I walk like an athlete. ~ Joan Caulfield

As the bartender struck a match to light her cigarette, she put her hand on his wrist to steady it. Travis saw him jump, draw back. He held his wrist, blew on it, looked at her reproachfully. Travis said: 'Why, you scratched him, Sarah.'

'Did I?' And as she turned and looked at him, he saw her hand twitch a little, and drew still further away from her. 'What - what's got into you?' he faltered.

There was some kind of tension spreading all around the horseshoe-shaped bar, emanating from her. All the cordiality, the sociability, was leaving it. Cheery conversations even at the far ends of it faltered and died, and the speakers looked around them as though wondering what was putting them so on edge. A heavy leaden pall of restless silence descended, as when a cloud goes over the sun. One or two people even turned and moved away reluctantly, as though they hadn't intended to but didn't like it at the bar any more. The gaunt-faced woman in red and black was the center of all eyes, but the looks sent her were not the admiring looks of men for a well-dressed woman; they were the blinking petrified looks a blacksnake would get in a poultry yard. Even the barman felt it. He dropped and smashed a glass, a thing he hadn't done since he'd been working on the ship. Even the canary felt it, and stood shivering pitifully on its perch, emitting an occasional cheep as though for help. ("I'm Dangerous Tonight") ~ Cornell Woolrich

I wanted to play a mother again. I thought it would be interesting to play the mother of an older child. And it was also the kind of part I've been looking for my whole career, actually, in film. You know, just to play a femme fatale who's very smart, and wicked. ~ Sigourney Weaver

The mystique of the femme fatale cannot be perfectly translated into male terms. ~ Camille Paglia

I ripped all her clothes off. She twisted and turned, slow, so they would slip out from under her. Then she closed her eyes and lay back on the pillow. Her hair was falling over her shoulders in snaky curls. Her eye was all black, and her breasts weren't drawn up and pointing up at me, but soft, and spread out in two big pink splotches. She looked like the great grandmother of every whore in the world. The devil got his money's worth that night. ~ James M. Cain

I really like action-dramas like 'The Professional' or 'La Femme Nikita.' I'd really like to be in a movie like that. ~ Cassie Steele

Woman is like a russian roulette", i've used to say, "it doesn't matter how many you dodge away or find the ones that would steal your breath and makes you sweat, at the end of the day, the fatal one always finds you. It is simply the law of the Love Gun. ~ Mladen Đorđević

Feminism has tried to dismiss the femme fatale as a misogynist libel, a hoary cliche. But the femme fatale expresses woman's ancient and eternal control of the sexual realm. The specter of the femme fatale stalks all of men's relationships with women. ~ Camille Paglia

I've worked with a lot of great glamorous girls in movies and the theater. And I'll admit, I've often thought it would be wonderful to be a femme fatale. But then I'd always come back to thinking that if they only had what I've had - a family, real love, an anchor - they would have been so much happier during all the hours when the marquees and the floodlights are dark. ~ Eve Arden

Ever since I could remember, She was all that mattered. ~ James J. Caterino

I've heard The Demolitionist described, premise-wise, as 'RoboCop' meets 'The Crow' by way of 'La Femme Nikita'. That, as I see it, could not be more accurate. ~ Nicole Eggert

Thus spoke the Beauty and her voice had a cheerful ring, and her face was aflame with a great rejoicing. She finished her story and began to laugh quietly, but not cheerfully. The Youth bowed down before her and silently kissed her hands, inhaling the languid fragrance of myrrh, aloe and musk which wafted from her body and her fine robes. The Beauty began to speak again.

'There came to me streams of oppressors, because my evil, poisonous beauty bewitches them. I smile at them, they who are doomed to death, and I feel pity for each of them, and some I almost loved, but I gave myself to no one. Each one I gave but one single kiss - and my kisses were innocent as the kisses of a tender sister. And whomsoever I kissed, died.'

The soul of the troubled Youth was caught in agony, between two quite irresolvable passions, the terror of death and an inexpressible ecstasy. But love, conquering all, overcoming even the anguish of death's grief, was triumphant once again today. Solemnly stretching out his trembling hands to the tender and terrifying Beauty, the Youth exclaimed, 'If death is in your kiss, o beloved, let me revel in the infinity of death. Cling to me, kiss me, love me, envelop me with the sweet fragrance of your poisonous breath, death after death pour into my body and into my soul before you destroy everything that once was me!'

'You want to! You are not afraid!' exclaimed the Beauty.

The face of the Beauty was pale in the rays ~ Valery Bryusov

And I always had this idea for making a movie about a femme fatale, because I like these characters. They're a lot of fun, they're sexy, they're manipulative, they're dangerous. ~ Brian De Palma

But the young Count insisted on the Beauty selecting a flower for him. He was waiting impatiently for her second present, the promised kiss - her first kiss.

The Beauty looked at the flowers. Once again her face was darkened by a delicate shade of sadness. Suddenly, as if prompted by some strange will, she quickly stretched out a hand, so exquisite in its naked whiteness, and plucked a many-petaled flower. Her hand hesitated, and she bowed her head, and finally with an expression of shy indecision she approached the Count and placed the flower in a buttonhole of his cloak.

The powerful and pungent scent wafted into the young Count's face, which grew pale as his head reeled in languid impotence. Indifference and tedium overcame him. He was scarcely aware of himself, he hardly noticed that the Beauty took him by the arm and led him into the house, away from the fragrances of the wondrous Garden.

In one of the rooms of the house where all was bright, white and rosy, the Count came to himself. A youthful vitality returned to his face, his black eyes were aflame with passion once again, and he felt the joy of life and the surge of desire anew. But already the inescapable lay in wait for him. A white hand, bare, slender, lay on his neck; and the fragrant kiss of the Beauty was tender, sweet, long. The two blue lightnings of her eyes flashed close to his eyes and were masked with the subtle mystery of her long eyelashes. The sinister fires of some ~ Valery Bryusov

I've grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains - good, potent female villains. Not ill-tempered women who scheme about landing good men and better shoes (as if we had nothing more interesting to war over), not chilly WASP mothers (emotionally distant isn't necessarily evil), not soapy vixens (merely bitchy doesn't qualify either). I'm talking violent, wicked women. Scary women. Don't tell me you don't know some. The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves - to the point of almost parodic encouragement - we've left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids. ~ Gillian Flynn

I feel a strong affinity to Ke$ha and Katy Perry and a lot of these women who are really pushing the girl power femme fatale thing. It's fun, and it's unapologetic, and they tell women they can do whatever they want, and that's true, and that's a message that I want to carry, to tell girls they can do whatever they want. ~ T. J. Miller

I'm from New York; I've been in show business all my life. I'm a wild and crazy gal, yet I always play these soft, warm, loving earth mothers. It's a pain in the butt. I'm a femme fatale! ~ Bonnie Bedelia

Whenever I get dumped, I nail the door shut so that no one can come inside, get a towel and clip it around my neck so it's like a Superman cape, take off my shoes so I can slide across the room, and ... get a fake mic, like a celery stick or a pen, and I play any record that features the vocalist Ronnie James Dio. And you can just pretend you're Dio, because on every album he does, he has minimum one, usually three, *EVIL WOMAN LOOK OUT!*- songs. And if you wanna point like Dio, it's a three-finger point. (heavy metal voice) 'The exit is that way. Evil LURKS! Evil lurks in twilight! Dances in the DARK! Evil woman! Just WALK AWAY! ~ Henry Rollins

I told you," Harry was saying to Ben. "I warned you. As soon as I saw her from distance, do you remember what I said to you?"
"Yes, yes. You said she was trouble. You where wrong there, and you're wrong now."
"Benjamin, I know about these things. She is trouble."
"You know nothing except the idiocy you glean from your insipid books that tell you nothing about life. You don't know how to live."
"And you do?"
"Yes, I do. She is no trouble. She is Life!"
Harry rolled his eyes to the heavens. "More fool you. How else do you define trouble?"
"Like a femme fatale," Ben said.
"Give her time, Benjamin. She is a fille fatale. Quattordici indeed!"
Ben moved away from mocking Harry, his shoulders dropping. ~ Paullina Simons

I think it's not a femme fatale when someone is not doing it to manipulate men or be like a black widow. She loves him. She does it out of love. She wants him so badly to stay with her. ~ Salma Hayek

The Great Mother aborts children, and is the dead fetus; breeds pestilence, and is the plague; she makes of the skull something gruesomely compelling, and is all skulls herself. To unveil her is to risk madness, to gaze over the abyss, to lose the way, to remember the repressed trauma. She is the molestor of children, the golem, the bogey-man, the monster in the swamp, the rotting cadaverous zombie who threatens the living. She is progenitor of the devil, the "strange son of chaos." She is the serpent, and Eve, the temptress; she is the femme fatale, the insect in the ointment, the hidden cancer, the chronic sickness, the plague of locusts, the cause of drought, the poisoned water. She uses erotic pleasure as bait to keep the world alive and breeding; she is a gothic monster, who feeds on the blood of the living. ~ Jordan B. Peterson

I'm not really a femme fatale. ~ Carla Bruni