Talk:Colette

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• A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.

• Be happy. It's one way of being wise.

• Give me a dozen such heartbreaks, if that would help me lose a couple of pounds.

• I am going away with him to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name, and where I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart.

• I believe there are more urgent and honourable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.

• In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.

• Is suffering so very serious? I have come to doubt it. It may be quite childish, a sort of undignified pastime / I'm referring to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on a man. It's extremely painful. I agree that it's hardly bearable. But I very much fear that this sort of pain deserves no consideration at all. It's no more worthy of respect than old age or illness.

• It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.

• January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead.

• Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight.

• Let's buy a pack of cards, good wine, bridge scores, knitting needles, all the paraphernalia needed to fill an enormous void, everything needed to hide that horror -- the old woman.

• Look for a long time at what pleases you, and for a longer time at what pains you. ** Variant: Look for a long time at what pleases you, and a longer time at what pains you.

• Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.

• No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.

• One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.

• Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.

• Shall we never have done with that cliche, so stupid that it could only be human, about the sympathy of animals for man when he is unhappy? Animals love happiness almost as much as we do. A fit of crying disturbs them, they'll sometimes imitate sobbing, and for a moment they'll reflect our sadness. But they flee unhappiness as they flee fever, and I believe that in the long run they are capable of boycotting it.

• Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either.

• Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

• The cat is the animal to whom the Creator gave the biggest eye, the softest fur, the most supremely delicate nostrils, a mobile ear, an unrivaled paw and a curved claw borrowed from the rose-tree.

• 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.

• The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives.

• The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike.

• The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.

• There are days when solitude 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 wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.

• Writing only leads to more writing.