For these people religion is the only form of intellectuality. - Edmund White

Stendhal had said a Frenchman was an Italian in a bad mood.

Recognizing that the world is governed by a minority, the sexually active, and that they hold sway of a huge majority of the nonsexual, those people too young or too old or too poor or too homely or sick or crazy or powerless to be able to afford sexual partners (or the luxury of systematic, sustained and shared introspection, so sexual in its own way). All advertisements and films and songs are addressed to sexuals, to their rash whims and finicky tastes.

Americans consider the sidewalk an anonymous backstage space, whereas for the French it is the stage itself.