Colette (1873 – 1954)
French writer, usually known simply by her pen-name "Colette.
Here lived, here died Colette, whose work is a window wide open on life.
The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before.
Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop a routine of the abyss: “It’s four o’clock ... At five I have my abyss.”
You do not notice changes in what is always before you.
Her childhood, then her adolescence, had taught her patience, hope, silence and the easy manipulation of the weapons and virtues of all prisoners.
The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.
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.
I am devoted to those who endured, like Colette. It is easier ... to kiss the world a bitter goodbye than to go on working, writing, changing, enduring the slings & arrows of outrageous aging. Colette endured. And she wrote & wrote & wrote. Whenever I feel really depressed, I think of her & keep going.
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.
As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow.
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.
By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks the flowers of memory, binds the bouquet.
It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change.
Nothing ages a woman like living in the country.
Whether you are dealing with an animal or a child, to convince is to weaken.
In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.