A Quote by Mavis Gallant
I wanted to live in Paris and write nothing but fiction and be perfectly free. I had decided all this had to be settled by the time I was thirty, and so I gave up my job and moved to Paris at twenty-eight. I just held my breath and jumped. I didn’t even look to see if there was water in the pool.
Related Quotes
Paradoxically, the freedom of Paris is associated with a persistent belief that nothing ever changes. Paris, they say, is the city that changes least. After an absence of twenty or thirty years, one still recognizes it.
From the time I was 16, I wanted to live in Paris. When I graduated college and didn't have a job, I went to take the LSAT because I didn't know what else to do. I walked out in the middle of the test and eventually found an internship in Paris at L'Oreal.
After the occupation of Paris, Hitler visited Paris, which of course was a great jewel for him, and he wanted to go up on the Eiffel Tower and gaze down upon the city of Paris, which he'd conquered. For some reason the elevators mysteriously stopped working that day. Some people say it might have had to do with the French resistance. So he couldn't go up.
I moved to Paris and I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I moved in with a friend who had an apartment there and was looking for a roommate. Quickly, I discovered that I didn't know what exactly I wanted to do, but I wanted it to be a little creative.
Too many architects are just trying to make all of their buildings look like a brand, and that may be good for business, but that is terrible for the cities because they lose character. If I go to Paris, I go to see the beauty of Paris and the coherence of Paris.
I was fuzzy on the details, but I knew the basic outline. I knew how I wanted to be, it was simply a question of being who I wanted to be.I thought I had had it all figured out before. I'd had the plan perfectly clear in my head. I wasn't going to cross into thirty without the triple crown in hand: serious boyfriend, career, and great friends..It was time to accept that maybe, just maybe, I didn't have to have it all figured out by the time I turned thirty. Maybe I could just work on me, and see what else fell into place.I was pretty sure that was otherwise known as living.
I stayed three weeks in Paris, fell in love with the city, and decided that I was born to live in Paris.
I never had the idea of moving to Paris and becoming something. I liked the idea of living in Paris because it seemed to have so many parts of life I really enjoyed. The people there seemed to prize literature and art, food and drinking, a more hedonistic way of living. My ambition was to be cosmopolitan. I grew up in the suburbs. I went to college in Maine. I had a dream in my head that if you wanted to be the most urbane, living-life-to-the-fullest kind of person, Paris was the place to be.
Okay, this is Fran Lebowitz. She gave an interview once for the Paris Review about trying to write fiction and saying that fiction writers start talking about how characters are talking to them, and it's crazy, she's never had that. And I also thought, I'm never gonna be able to do this, because I didn't feel that for a really long time.
Americans continue to visit Paris not just for Paris, but for ‘Paris.’ As if out of some collective nostalgia for what Paris should be, more than what it is. For someone else’s memories.
We had maybe the greatest success of any company that I know of in Paris, and after two or three years I wanted to do this same number that we did for PBS, so we did it and Paris had always considered us their darlings.
The time I spent working in the wild west show in Paris had a pretty big impact on me. A friend of mine had hooked me up with the gig over there and I literally left Texas with a hundred dollar bill in my pocket and one way plane ticket to Paris.
Every time I look down on this timeless town Whether blue or gray be her skies. Whether loud be her cheers or soft be her tears, More and more do I realize: I love Paris in the springtime. I love Paris in the fall. I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles, I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles. I love Paris every moment, Every moment of the year. I love Paris, why, oh why do I love Paris? Because my love is near.
Paris Singer had vastly more to do with shaping my character than Mother had; although Mother made innumerable sacrifices for me, and Paris Singer made none. I wanted to be like him.
I had arrived years ago in Paris and just wanted to be famous, fast. When you're pretentious like that, and you think you've planned everything perfectly, it's then that everything goes in the opposite way.
Paris is not so square. I'm not good at the geography of the city in Paris, so I'm always lost. Here, in New York, you can never be lost. In Paris, even when I walk to my gallery or whatever, I always take another route, because Paris is not built that way.
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