Top 36 Quotes & Sayings by Edith Piaf

Tell me what you'd like to hear me sing. I'll sing whatever you like, after which I'll take up a collection, if you don't mind.

If God has allowed me to earn so much money, it is because He knows I give it all away.

I've always wanted to sing, just as I've always known that one day I would have my own niche in the annals of song. It was a feeling I had.

To sing is to bring to life; impossible if the words are mediocre, however good the music.

Singing is a way of escaping. It's another world. I'm no longer on earth.

I wouldn't mind at all coming back to earth after my death.

I think you have to pay for love with bitter tears.

People say that I could sing the phone book and make it sound good.

As far as I'm concerned, love means fighting, big fat lies, and a couple of slaps across the face.

I don't want to die an old lady.

To be successful in my native France, where people speak the same language and understand me, is nothing.

I'd like to see one person - just one - who would own up to having been a coward.

I want to make people cry even when they don't understand my words.

Don't care what people say. Don't give a damn about their laws.

Money? How did I lose it? I never did lose it. I just never knew where it went.

I've been thinking about Jesus. Don't you find it a bit strange that, since He was living with His family and all, He up and left them just when they needed him most?

All I've done all my life is disobey.

Death is the beginning of something.

Death does not exist.

I was hungry. I was cold. But I was also free. Free not to get up in the morning, not to go to bed at night, free to get drunk if I liked, to dream... to hope.

Americans want beauties, not me. I’m not the Parisian bombshell they expected. Can you see me as a chorus girl? Where’s my feather up the ass? They think I’m sad, they’re dumb. I don’t connect to them

When he takes me in his arms, and speaks to me softly, I see the world through rose-colored glasses.

Use your faults, use your defects; then you're going to be a star.

I want to die young. I think it's awful to get old, and sickness is ugly.

Never acknowledge the limitations of man. Smash all boundaries! Deny whatever your eyes see. Die every moment, but say: "Death does not exist."

I always thought my days spent in darkness [as a child she had cataracts and was unable to see for nearly four years] gave me a very special sensitivity. Much later, when I really wanted to hear, really 'see' a song, I'd close my eyes, and when I wanted to bring it out of the very depths of myself, out of my guts, out of my belly, when the song had to come from far away, I'd close my eyes.

Every damn fool thing you do in this life you pay for.

I'm the only one who still believes in Santa Claus!

My conservatory is in the streets. My intelligence is instinct.

Drugs are a carnival in hell.

For me, sleeping is a waste of time. I'm afraid to sleep. It's a form of death.

When you reach the top, you should remember to send the elevator back down for the others.

I don't lie; I improve on my life.

I can die now. I've lived twice.

Performers and their public should never meet. Once the curtain comes down, the performer should fly away like a magician's dove.

I'm sure that I've already been dead.