Colette Quotes

Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave.

There are days when solitude, for someone my age, is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.

What a delight it is to make friends with someone you have despised!

On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us — ah! what a dream, to live in that! — the other stifles us at the first breath.

The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.

You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.

I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer.

When you are loved, you do not doubt anything. When you love, you doubt everything

To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.

Hay que envejecer terriblemente para renunciar a la vanidad de vivir ante alguien

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.

Kiki-The-Demure: Once when I was little She tried to give me castor oil. I scratched and bit her so, she never tried again. Ha! She must have thought she held the devil between her knees. I squirmed, blew fire through my nostrils, multiplied my twenty claws by a hundred, my teeth by one thousand, and finally — disappeared as if by magic. Toby-Dog: I wouldn't dare do that. You see, I love her. I love her enough to forgive her even the torture of the bath.

The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.

In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.

Life as a child and then as a girl had taught her patience, hope, silence; and given her a prisoner's proficiency in handling these virtues as weapons.