Francoise Sagan Quotes

All my life, I will continue obstinately to write about love, solitude and passion among the kind of people I know. The rest don't interest me.

— Francoise Sagan

“It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the 'fronts' people assume before one another's eyes, and the 'front' a writer puts on the face of reality.”

— Francoise Sagan

Art must take reality by surprise.

— Francoise Sagan

“I always believe things are going to work out.”

— Francoise Sagan

“I've read Proust and Stendhal. That keeps you in your place.”

— Francoise Sagan

“Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.”

— Francoise Sagan

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

“Marriage? It's like asparagus eaten with vinaigrette or hollandaise, a matter of taste but of no importance.”

— Francoise Sagan

“One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter.”

— Francoise Sagan

“Every time I see a film about Joan of Arc I'm convinced she'll get away with it. It's the only way to get through life.”

— Francoise Sagan

Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.

— Francoise Sagan

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

— Francoise Sagan

I've tried very hard and I've never found any resemblance between the people I know and the people in my novels.

— Francoise Sagan

“Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.”

— Francoise Sagan

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

— Francoise Sagan

“It would be bad form for me to describe people I don't know and don't understand.”

— Francoise Sagan

“I dreamt of being a writer once I started to read. I started to write 'Bonjour Tristesse' in bistros around the Sorbonne. I finished it, I sent it to editors. It was accepted.”

— Francoise Sagan

“There is a certain age when a woman must be beautiful to be loved, and then there comes a time when she must be loved to be beautiful.”

— Francoise Sagan

“There is no such thing as an ideal man. The ideal man is the man you love at the moment.”

— Francoise Sagan

“I recognize limitations in the sense that I've read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and Shakespeare ... Aside from that I don't think of limiting myself.”

— Francoise Sagan

“If you treat life well, life is usually good to you. And I love life. There's a long-standing affair between us.”

— Francoise Sagan

“It is healthier to see the good points of others than to analyze our own bad ones.”

— Francoise Sagan

“Writing is just having a sheet of paper, a pen and not a shadow of an idea of what you are going to say.”

— Francoise Sagan

“I think the best way to waste time is to try to save time.”

— Francoise Sagan

The happiness of others is never bearable for very long ...

— 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

“No one ever has time to examine himself honestly, and most people look no further than their neighbors' eyes, in which they may see their own reflection.”

— Francoise Sagan

Passion is the salt of life, and that at the times when we are under its spell this salt is indispensable to us, even if we have got along very well without it before.

— Francoise Sagan

“In love, as in finance, only the rich can get credit.”

— Francoise Sagan

“No one is more conventional than a woman who is falling out of love.”

— Francoise Sagan

Love is worth whatever it costs.

— Francoise Sagan

Art must take reality by surprise. It takes those moments which are for us merely a moment, plus a moment, plus another moment, and arbitrarily transforms them into a special series of moments held together by a major emotion.

— Francoise Sagan

When man, Apollo man, rockets into space, it isn't in order to find his brother, I'm quite sure of that. It's to confirm that he hasn't any brothers.

— Francoise Sagan

“It isn't common sense that is paramount in this world, it's wishful thinking.”

— Francoise Sagan

“I feel sorry for men. They have more problems than women, because they now have to compete with women.”

— Francoise Sagan

“When you make a decision to write according to a set schedule and really stick to it, you find yourself writing very fast. At least I do.”

— Francoise Sagan

“If you don't have imagination you're lost. But it's a virtue that's becoming increasingly rare, especially in its higher form: spontaneity. Mad, happy spontaneity.”

— Francoise Sagan

“Houses are for private living, for friends, and for dogs.”

— Francoise Sagan

“There are moments when you feel trapped, ill at ease. A year later the same feeling can turn out to be the theme of a book.”

— Francoise Sagan

Pity is an agreeable sentiment, uplifting like military music.

— Francoise Sagan

“At night, time becomes a calm sea. It goes on for ever.”

— Francoise Sagan

“No one talks about money more than people who have too much of it ...”

— Francoise Sagan

The rich have a passion for bargains as lively as it is pointless.

— Francoise Sagan

“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

“Happiness has always seemed to me a great achievement.”

— Francoise Sagan

“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

Illness is the opposite of freedom. It makes everything impossible.

— Francoise Sagan

“We are torn between the craving to know and the despair of having known.”

— Francoise Sagan

“No one, but no one, ever behaves 'well' in bed unless they love or are loved - two conditions seldom fulfilled.”

— Francoise Sagan

“Looking for pleasure is the best way to ensure you won't find it.”

— Francoise Sagan