A Quote by Peter Mayle

The funny thing in France is that writers are not allowed to retire, because the French government say you are still earning money from books you wrote 20 years ago.

Peter Mayle

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Allowed Because Books Earning Earning Money France French Funny Funny Thing Government Money Retire Say Still Thing Writers Wrote Years Years Ago

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Peter Mayle
British - Author
June 14, 1939 - January 18, 2018

That certain snobbery of certainly the Parisian - combined with a complete denial of your historical legacy, is just awful. That's a funny thing about France. Saul Bellow wrote somewhere that he saw right through the French. He lived there. He wrote The Adventures of Augie March in Paris, and there's no one better than him to say what's unbearable about the French.

Martin Amis

I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.

Jim Harrison

It's very important to say that French doesn't belong to France and to French people. Now you have very wonderful poets and writers in French who are not French or Algerian - who are from Senegal, from Haiti, from Canada, a lot of parts of the world.

Leila Slimani

I read one of the funniest books last week by Don DeLillo. He wrote this book, 'Amazons' many years ago, under the pseudonym Cleo Birdwell. The book is very funny but I also think it's funny that he denies any involvement with it.

Ardal O'Hanlon

In France today, people no longer eat as much heavy food and fat as they did 15 or 20 years ago. These days, French cooking, through the influence of 'grande cuisine,' has become a bit lighter. And we are beginning to discover the original flavors of our produce.

Joel Robuchon

Many years ago, I was actually hired to write the sequel to 'Independence Day.' And I wrote a sequel. And they paid me a boatload of money to go write this thing. And after I wrote it, I read it and I gave them back the money and I said, 'Look, this is an okay movie I just wrote. But it's not worthy of the sequel to 'Independence Day.'

Dean Devlin

So my brain started ticking and I bought all my books from a cookbook shop, Libraire Gourmand in Paris. I bought them over the Internet and they sent them from France. I got the 'Larousse' in a box with 20 other books. I was pretty excited. It was like Christmas for 20 years.

Adriano Zumbo

You know, it's a funny thing about writers. Most people don't stop to think of books being written by people much like themselves. They think that writers are all dead long ago--they don't expect to meet them in the street or out shopping. They know their stories but not their names, and certainly not their faces. And most writers like it that way.

Cornelia Funke

At a time when there's younger writers starting up and it's inevitable that you're becoming less fashionable, at a time when the industrial pressures apply more and more to books, how do you keep a book you wrote 28 years ago selling well year on year? Because it really is getting harder.

William Boyd

The French are pretty thin-skinned. The few times I mentioned a French writer in 'City Boy,' the relatives would ring up in high dudgeon. I once wrote a mocking review of Marguerite Duras in the 'New York Review of Books,' and good friends of mine in France got very angry.

Edmund White

I wrote Her First American and I always say it took me eighteen years. It took me that long was because after about five years I stopped and wrote Lucinella. I got stuck; it was too hard to write. Lucinella felt like a lark. I wanted to write about the literary circle because it amused me, and I allowed myself to do what I wanted to do. It's just one of the things I'm allowed to do if I feel like it.

Lore Segal

I don't change the language for children books. I don't make the language simpler. I use words that they might have to look up in the dictionary. The books are shorter, but there's just not that much difference other than that to be honest. And the funny thing is, I have adult writer friends [to whom I would say], "Would you think of writing a children's book?" and they go, "No, God, I wouldn't know how." They're quite intimidated by the concept of it. And when I say to children's books writers, would they write an adult book, they say no because they think they're too good for it.

John Boyne

It's funny because I think that both France and Britain are known for their distinctive styles, and everyone says that France is so chic and elegant but I think, more than that, French women are renowned for dressing in what suits them.

Alexa Chung

It's funny because I think that both France and Britain are known for their distinctive styles and everyone says that France is so chic and elegant but I think more than that French women are renowned for dressing in what suits them.

Alexa Chung

I live in New York now, and miss France quite a bit. Of course, the reality of living in a small village in the south of France was very different than the fantasy I had of living in France. Over the years I spent there, that fantasy was worn away and I found a more realistic version of France than the one I began with. I wouldn't say the spell ever goes away, but transforms. Now that I understand French culture more intimately, and speak fluent French, I have a different, more solid, relationship to the country.

Danielle Trussoni

The happiest people I know are the ones that are still working. The saddest are the ones who are retired. Very few performers retire on their own. It's usually because no one wants them. Six years ago Sinatra announced his retirement. He's still working.

George Burns

A Quote by Peter Mayle

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