Colette > Quotes

“It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses. ”
― Colette

“You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.”
― Colette

“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)”
― Colette

“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.”
― Colette, Oeuvres complètes en seize volumes

“Hope costs nothing. ”
― Colette

“There are no ordinary cats.”
― Colette

“Time spent with a cat is never wasted.”
― Colette

“No one asked you to be happy. Get to work.”
― Colette

“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.”
― Colette, Chéri

“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”
― Colette

“If he's getting married, he's not longer interesting.”
― Colette, Gigi & The Cat

“In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.”
― Colette

“When she raises her eyelids, it's as if she were taking off all her clothes.”
― Colette

“Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.”
― Colette

“Be happy.
It's one way of being wise.”
― Colette

“look for a long time at what pleases you, and longer still at what pains you...”
― Colette

“I want nothing from love, in short, but love.”
― Colette, The Vagabond

“I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually.”
― Colette, The Pure and the Impure

“The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.”
― Colette

“Total absence of humor renders life impossible.”
― Colette, Chance Acquaintances and Julie de Carneilhan

“To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one. ”
― Colette

“I have found my voice again and the art of using it...”
― Colette, The Vagabond

“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.”
― Colette, The Vagabond

“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.”
― Colette, Gigi, Julie de Carneilhan, and Chance Acquaintances: Three Short Novels

“If I can’t have too many truffles, I’ll do without truffles.”
― Colette

“But what is the heart, madame? It's worth less than people think. it's quite accommodating, it accepts anything. You give it whatever you have, it's not very particular. But the body... Ha! That's something else again! It has a cultivated taste, as they say, it knows what it wants. A heart doesn't choose, and one always ends up by loving.”
― Colette, The Pure and the Impure

“Chance, my master and my friend, will, I feel sure, deign once again to send me the spirits of his unruly kingdom. All my trust is now in him- and in myself. But above all in him, for when I go under he always fishes me out, seizing and shaking me like a life-saving dog whose teeth tear my skin a little every time. 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. ”
― Colette

“beautiful December grapes, blue as plums, every grape a little skinful of sweet, tasteless water”
― Colette, The Vagabond

“To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.”
― Colette

“There are days when solitude, for someone my age, 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.”
― Colette

“Live in the moment!”
― Colette

“Tout m'est egalement odieux.”
― Colette

“- and how time flies! What, has it already been twenty years, already forty years that we are together? Why, how terrible! We haven't yet said all we wanted to say to each other... May we have a little respite, or else may we be allowed to begin all over again!”
― Colette, The Pure and the Impure

“Los compañeros perfectos no tienen menos de cuatro patas.”
― Colette

“Music is love in search of a word.”
― Colette

“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.”
― Colette, My Mother's House & Sido

“It can't drag on this way much longer," she said to herself. "One evening he'll whistle under my window, I'll go down by a ladder or a knotted rope and he will carry me away on a motorcycle, off to a den where his subjects will be assembled. He'll say: 'Here is your new Queen.' And... and... it will be terrible!"
viii. Their Queen is away and anarchy reigns! The Journal said so! How grand to be Queen, with a red ribbon and a revolver...”
― Colette

“At the top of the iron staircase leading to the stage, the good, dry, dusty warmth wraps me round like a comfortable dirty cloak.”
― Colette, The Vagabond

“And since, through lack of vocation or from habit, [Julie] was prone to confuse pity with boredom, she felt herself practically a prisoner...”
― Colette, Gigi, Julie de Carneilhan, and Chance Acquaintances: Three Short Novels

“[Julie] had lived a great deal among lies, before plumping for a small life of her own, a sincere and restricted life from which all pretense, even in matters sensual, was banished. How many crazy decisions and allegiances to successive aspects fo the truth! Had she not, one day when her costume for a fancy dress had demanded short hair, cut off the great chestnut mane that fell below her waist when she let it down? 'I could have hired a wig,' she thought. 'I might also, at a pinch, have passed the rest of my life with Becker or Espivant. If it comes to that, I could also have gone on stirring puddings in a saucepan at Carneilhan. The things "one might have done" are, in fact, the things one could not do...”
― Colette, Gigi, Julie de Carneilhan, and Chance Acquaintances: Three Short Novels

“Be happy. It's one way of being wise.”
― Colette

“Minne, pâle comme une nuit de lune, se réchauffe, un peu blessée, à ce feu de couleurs, et parfois, toute nue au soleil, un miroir à la main, cherche en vain, à travers son corps mince, l'ombre plus noire de son squelette élégant.”
― Colette, L'ingénue libertine

“That lovely voice; how I should weep for joy if I could hear it now!”
― Colette

“There is no doubt that, if ever my heart were to call my master Chance by another name, I should make an excellent Catholic.”
― Colette, The Vagabond

“I have nothing to say to men and never had. Judging from the little time I’ve spent with them, their usual conversation is sickening. Besides, they bore me. I believe,” he hesitated, then concluded, “I believe I don’t understand men.”
― Colette, The Pure and the Impure

“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.”
― Colette

“Don't ever wear artistic jewelry; it wrecks a woman's reputation”
― Colette

“El tiempo recompensa a los adversarios honestos.”
― Colette, The Pure and the Impure

“Nulla porta-lo so- all'amore. E' lui che si butta di traverso sulla vostra strada. La sbarra per sempre o se se ne allontana lascia la via sconvolta, sfondata.

Soltanto nel dolore una donna è capace di superare la mediocrità”
― Colette

“Che cosa avevano in comune quel corpo, l'uso che non poteva fare l'amore, i suoi inevitabili scopi, e il destino di un altro corpo di donna, votato a delicati rapimenti, dotato i una genialità da predone, di un'appassionata implacabilità, di una pedagogia ipocrita e incantatrice?

"Nascondeva con difficoltà un dolore che non riusciva a comprendere. Che cosa aveva dunque conquistato, la notte scorsa, nell'ombra profumata, tra quelle braccia ansiose di farlo uomo e vittorioso? Il diritto di soffrire? Il diritto di mancare per debolezza davanti a una fanciulla innocente e pura? Il diritto di tremare se non si sa perchè, dinanzi alla delicata vita delle bestie e al sangue fuggito dalle sue sorgenti?

"Ah, la luce sorda e rossastra di una camera sconosciuta! Ah, quella buia felicità, quella morte raggiunta per gradi, e poi la vita, recuperata a lenti colpi d'ala..."

"Quelle piccole orecchie arrossate risuonavano ancora di un grido sommesso, soffocato come quello di un essere che venga sgozzato? Qulle braccia, ricche di muscoli appena visibili, l'avevano portato, leggero, confuso, da questo mondo in un altro mondo; quella bocca avara di parole, s'era chinaa per trasmetter e per mormorare, indistinto, un canto che nasceva debole eco, dalle profondità in cui la vita è una convulsione terribile...Ella sapeva tutto...”
― Colette