What’s up readers? I posted a book review of Beginning French by les Américains yesterday and today, I’m going to share to you my favorite lines from the book. I hope you like these lines too! 😄 📚💕🌼

“On the map a village is just a village. When you’re standing in the middle of one, you realize that this is a particular village, with a particular atmosphere and a particular magic.”

“Trop haute (too tall), trop petite (too small), trop grande (too big), trop lourde (too heavy), and trop chere (too expensive). Also Combien pour…? (How much for…?) and En avez-vous d’autres? (Do you have others?).”

“You know— why we do it,” she says. “Why we pack up our clothes, our computers, the dogs, everything. Why we close up our house in California and hire strangers to watch over it.” “Why do we?” “Because of this,” she says, with an inclusive gesture. “This landscape. This fragrance. This view. As soon as we get here I start to forget all the effort and pain. And then I never want to leave.”

“There are three great pleasures in life. Eating when you’re hungry. Falling asleep when you’re tired. And finding love when you’re lonely.”
“Ce n’est pas de ma faute.” It’s not my fault.

“You do not come to my hotel and parade your pâtisseries in front of the breakfast guests.” She indicated a small group of diners behind us. “Unlike you, they have paid for their hotel meal.” Apparently, there were different rules in France, and we had just tripped over one. We made apologetic sounds and submissive gestures. We offered to reserve tomorrow’s breakfast for the sake of international relations . It was her country, after all. Pointing out the differences between our cultures wouldn’t serve much purpose. The best strategy in these cases is to make a mental note and move on.”

“It doesn’t cost a cent to dream.”

“Madame,” he said from across the room, leveling a chef’s knife at Eileen. “You do not come to a fine restaurant and fail to order a starter!” “Monsieur—” she said, pushing back her chair and pulling herself to her full five-foot -two. “You do not speak to a lady in that way. I am the customer. You are the chef. I will eat what I can, and you will prepare it. D’accord? ”

THE FRENCH will tell you there are two Frances: Paris, and the 36,500 smaller communes that make up the rest of the country. These two Frances are as different as New York City and the rest of the United States.

“Hunting is how we live, but beauty is why we live. Would you want to go through life without art, or music, or movies, or stories?”

“It’s one thing to see a village on a map. It’s another to smell the mussels simmering in the pot, to taste the subtle differences among cheeses, to hear the music of accordion and guitar, to walk on cobbled streets with half-timbered houses leaning out over your head.”
“When we need to talk I bring a dictionary, and David brings a sketchbook to make drawings.”

“Only yesterday I was on top of Mt. Everest. Today I’m lying in the Mariana Trench.”

“Aquitaine is unique in that it combines extraordinary beauty with a relaxing serenity, an authentic “Frenchness” that remains unspoiled by tourism and commerce.”

“Any object worthy of perpetual fantasy is priceless.”

“Relationship problems are zombies. Just when you think you’ve killed one, it reappears right behind you, dragging its blood-soaked Ferragamos in slow-motion pursuit.”

“You can’t really feel like part of a community if you don’t have some skin in the game.”

“French is the language of aesthetics and philosophy and Moliére.”

“It was never our dream to live in luxury. It was always to travel broadly and experience deeply.”

“Whatever you do, don’t change a thing until you understand it.”
“Sara believes that a happy occasion can be made happier with a fabulous meal. Conversely, she feels that an unhappy situation can be reversed in exactly the same way. No matter what the question, good food is the answer.
It smelled like death— the death of a dream.”
“The Johnsons moved to France fifteen years ago on the orders of a doctor. Peter’s health had been suffering from the increasing stress of his engineering job, so his physician issued one of the best prescriptions ever written: “Go to France and drink red wine,” he said. “Your working days are over.”

“Money isn’t wealth. It’s only potential wealth. It might even be a barrier to wealth. Real wealth accrues when you invest in things that matter. Family, say, or your community. Your own education. Your ever-broadening view.”

Eileen would quiz me: “Seventy-eight.” “Soixante-dix-huit,” I would shoot back. Not seventy-eight, but sixty plus eighteen. “Correct! Now, three hundred eighty.”“Trois cent quatre-vingt.” Three hundred plus twenty times four. Apparently, the French have to learn to multiply before they can count.

“My French numbers took a hike. My vocabulary dissolved into gibberish. All brain functions ceased.”

“LOOKING BACK, it had been a summer of progress. There had been no boiler explosions . No pool contaminations. No major plagues. We had gained the acceptance of the boules group, discovered the joys of night markets, and cracked the code for duck burgers. We had even learned to dance— after a fashion.”
“A dream is only a wish, a light sketch of a possibility. Yet some dreams turn out to be the meaning of your life. What do you want your life to be? How big a world do you want to live in? How much do you want to discover who you’ll become? You don’t have to buy a house in a foreign country to address these questions. You don’t need much more than a “travel attitude”— a curiosity about other people, other places, new experiences.”

More Favorite Book Lines:

My Favorite Lines from Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth: Favorite Lines 

The Land of Stories: A Grimm Warning by Chris Colfer (Favorite Lines) 

Black Ice by Becca Fitzpatrick Quotes

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo Quotes

Favorite Lines from Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Favorite Lines from Cress by Marissa Meyer

The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom Quotes

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo Quotes
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Thank you for reading and cheers to more books! 🍷📚💖😄
Love,

Flexi ❤