What French Women Know About Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind Quotes

“For one of the first pressures that bear down on American girls is the pressure not only to be liked but to be like everyone else. This initial feat of self-transformation often involves loosening one's grip on that quiet sense of inner self and hitching one's wagon to a single standard of beauty. The stress of leaping through that hoop insinuates itself into the young heart and soul with a vengeance, and insecurities go from being hard little buds of confusion to overripe, snarled and tyrannical fruits that hang on the vine as we age.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know About Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“As the old French proverb warns: “He who fears to suffer suffers from fear.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“It's not equality that counts, it's reprocity that counts. Love is not like a balance sheet. There's no such thing as double-entry accounting when it comes to love.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know About Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“Men may be the head of the house, but the women are the neck, and they can turn the head any way they want.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know About Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“One thing you have to give up is attaching importance to what people see in you. —JEANNE MOREAU”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“When Less is More, you often get More with Less. More passion with less planning. More love and intimacy with less information and grief. More freedom with less fretting. And, yes, while we’re at it, more style with less stuff.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“Albert Einstein put it differently: “Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.” Smart guy.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“Fate. Now that's a loaded word. Like "yoga" or "karma", it's one of those words that slipped out of its native culture and ended up a celebrity with an extreme makeover.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know About Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“author Véronique Vienne recalled how she had to work hard to adapt to the mandated cheerfulness of American culture when she moved from France to the States; she practiced her smile in the mirror, trying her best to look like “Miss Congenial ity,” before concluding that “in this country, the obligation we feel to conform to exalted standards of happiness can be pure misery.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“Alexis de Tocqueville took one good hard look at America’s growing colonies and noted: “America is the one country in the world where the most continual care has been taken to trace clearly separated lines of action for the two sexes, and where the wish is for them to walk with equal steps, but always on different paths.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“Thomas Jefferson took one look at permissive Parisian women and, comparing them to pious American maidens, declared: “A comparison of amazons to angels!” (Too bad he didn’t live long enough to meet Britney Spears.)”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“You have to love men a lot,” she once wrote. “A lot, a lot. You have to love men a lot. Otherwise they are simply unbearable.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“Admittedly, my focus is on the most redeeming qualities of these creatures, but the exercise here is not to glorify or ennoble them; rather, it is, as Descartes implied, to contrast cultural values in the hopes that we might see our own in a new light.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind