Sidonie Quotes

Truffles must come to the table in their own stock and as you break open this jewel sprung from a poverty-stricken soil, imagine - if you have never visited it - the desolate kingdom where it rules. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop a routine of the abyss: It's four o clock. At five I have my abyss ... ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

A woman who thinks she is intelligent demands the same rights as man. An intelligent woman gives up. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Open your mouth, tesoro." He angled her face higher. "Open your mouth for me."
At his raw demand, her eyes flared wide. For a drunken moment, he drowned in glorious brown, rich, autumnal, sensual. ~ Anna Campbell

By an image we hold on to our lost treasures, but it is the wrenching loss that forms the image, composes, binds the bouquet. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

A kindly gesture bestowed by us on an animal arouses prodigies of understanding and gratitude. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

I am going away with him to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name, and where I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Sidonie, I know you don't remember it, but you once promised to trust me beyond all reason. And I swear to you that all that I am, all that I possess, including this gem-stone, is yours. I need you. I can't do this alone. Forget your memories. Look into your heart. And if you can find somewhere there, some lingering spark of trust that owes naught to reason, I beg you to speak the word written here. ~ Jacqueline Carey

Sit down and 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. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

I wonder why peopke are so afraid of love. Of different kinds of love. I just don't get it. Why aren't we afraid of racism Of war? But love? It just doesn't make sense. ~ Gail Sidonie Sobat

It was fun to see him becoming sententious again, glorying in a science he had invented, and as positive as a village soothsayer.

'So one should neither give nor receive?' I laughed. 'And if the lover is poor, his mistress indigent, then both she and he must tactfully let themselves and each other die?'

'Let them die,' he repeated.

I had accompanied him as far as the revolving glass door of the lobby.

'Let them die,' he said again. 'It's less dangerous. I can swear on my word of honor that I never gave a present or made a loan or an exchange of anything except . . . this . . .'

He waved both hands in a complicated gesture which fleetingly indicated his chest, his mouth, his genitals, his thighs. Thanks no doubt to my fatigue, I was reminded of an animal standing on its hind legs and unwinding the invisible. Then he resumed his strictly human significance, opened the door, and easily mingled with the night outside, where the sea was already a little paler than the sky. ~ Colette

Thackeray's a good writer and Flaubert is a great artist. Trollope is a good writer and Dickens is a great artist. Colette is a very good writer and Proust is a great artist. Katherine Anne Porter was an extremely good writer and Willa Cather was a great artist. ~ Truman Capote

The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks the flowers of memory, binds the bouquet. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

You do not notice changes in what is always before you. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Is suffering so very serious? ... I'm referring to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on a man. It's extremely painful ... hardly bearable. But I very much fear that this sort of pain ... is no more worthy of respect than old age or illness. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

If we want to be sincere, we must admit that there is a well-nourished love and an ill-nourished love. And the rest is literature. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Mrs. [Sidonie Matsner] Gruenberg [in Radio and Children]. . . says:
Probably the 'good' effects upon children's characters are as unpremeditated as the 'bad.' We have not yet found any sure way through our didactic teaching or other devices to make our children 'good.' We may at least suspect that some of the objectionable lessons are equally ineffective in making them 'bad. ~ Judith C. Waller

A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Sidonie," he said, his voice strangely hoarse. "You are the most - I mean, you are so ... I find you ... ah, devil take it! Never mind!"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Nothing," he growled. "I misspoke. What did you say about oranges? ~ Liz Carlyle

It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

He looked younger, kinder, a brighter image of the man she knew. A man life hadn't mistreated or betrayed. Whatever the pain of this union, she loved that she gave him this momentary peace. This encounter lurched from the physical onto a different plane. A plane revealing a new emotional landscape. She felt lightheaded, lost. ~ Anna Campbell

My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Among all the modernized aspects of the most luxurious of industries, the model, a vestige of voluptuous barbarianism, is like some plunder-laden prey. She is the object of unbridled regard, a living bait, the passive realization of an ideal. No other female occupation contains such potent impulses to moral disintegration as this one, applying as it does the outward signs of riches to a poor and beautiful girl. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

She [Sidonie Rougon] never spoke of her husband, nor of her childhood, her family, or her personal concerns. There was only one thing she never sold, and that was herself. ~ Emile Zola

She loved his laughter. She loved that he faced the world with a reckless smile on his scarred face. Her heart crashed against her chest. A revelation descended. A revelation unrelated to the desire heating her blood. ~ Anna Campbell

Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

The tension drained from her face and she softened in his hold until she was again the fluid, responsive woman who had kissed him within an inch of his life. This time he knew better than to restrain her when she slipped from the bed. He bit back an appeal for her to stay with him. If his life depended on it, he couldn't say whether he wanted her to stay an hour, a day, or forever. ~ Anna Campbell

The more sensitive the lunatic, the less able is he to resist this prying interest of the normal human being. I felt that Renée's change of key - to myself, I compared Renée to a sweet melody, a little flat despite its laborious harmonies - was approaching. ~ Colette

A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

I am indebted to the cat for a particular kind of honorable deceit, for a greater control over myself, for a characteristic aversion to brutal sounds, and for the need to keep silent for long periods of time. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette