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Françoise Sagan Quotes

Françoise Sagan – real name Françoise Quoirez – was a French playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Hailed as "a charming little monster" by François Mauriac on the front page of Le Figaro, Sagan was known for works with strong romantic themes involving wealthy and disillusioned bourgeois characters. Her best-known novel was her first – Bonjour Tristesse – which was written when she was a teenager.

✵ 21. June 1935 – 24. September 2004  •  Other names Françoise Saganová
Françoise Sagan photo

Works

Dans un mois, dans un an
Françoise Sagan
A Certain Smile
A Certain Smile
Françoise Sagan
Bonjour tristesse
Françoise Sagan
Dans un mois, dans un an
Françoise Sagan
A Certain Smile
A Certain Smile
Françoise Sagan
Bonjour tristesse
Françoise Sagan
Françoise Sagan: 34 quotes37 likes

Famous Françoise Sagan Quotes

“The ways of love are all the same, whether infantile, childish, sexual, tender, sadistic, erotic, or whispered. It's simply a question of understanding, of understanding oneself above all: in bed, in broad daylight, madly or not at all, in shadow, in sunlight, in despair or at table. Otherwise, it's no use. Any of it. And the little time we have left for living, while we're still alive, in other words capable of giving pleasure, and the little time we have left for thinking (or pretending to) in this vast, mindless cacophony that daily life has become, ineluctable, uncontrollable, and truly unacceptable to any civilized person, we must make absolutely certain that we share.”

Françoise Sagan

Scars on the Soul (1972)

“I don’t search for exactitude in portraying people. I try to give to imaginary people a kind of veracity.”

Françoise Sagan

Paris Review interview (1956)
Context: I don’t search for exactitude in portraying people. I try to give to imaginary people a kind of veracity. It would bore me to death to put into my novels the people I know. It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the “fronts” people assume before one another’s eyes, and the “front” a writer puts on the face of reality.

“Could you love a woman you didn't respect? Could you worship someone without believeing in her? Could you be madly in love with a woman you didn't admire? Well, you could. Not only that, it might be better that way. Easier. It took Paul almost forty years to learn that carnal platitude. Nevertheless, he always took Sonia to dinners where, sooner or later, her stupidity would explode, with the result that brighter souls would inevitably pick up on it right away and cast a sympathetic, albeit ironical, look in his direction, which only excited him all the more.”

Françoise Sagan

Un chagrin de passage (1994, A Fleeting Sorrow, translated 1995)

“Women believed in death. Without exception. It was part of their makeup. Whereas men refused to face up to it. Not only death, in fact, but life, too: a man, learning that his wife or girlfriend is pregnant, reacts like some beast of the field - "I can't believe it's true!" - while women look at the same situation as either happy news or a momentary inconvenience.”

Françoise Sagan

Un chagrin de passage (1994, A Fleeting Sorrow, translated 1995)

“It's not doubt that drives people crazy, it's certainty that does.”

Françoise Sagan

Un chagrin de passage (1994, A Fleeting Sorrow, translated 1995)

“Art must take reality by surprise. It takes those moments which are for us merely a moment, plus a moment, plus another moment, and arbitrarily transforms them into a special series of moments held together by a major emotion. Art should not, it seems to me, pose the “real” as a preoccupation. Nothing is more unreal than certain so-called “realist” novels — they’re nightmares. It is possible to achieve in a novel a certain sensory truth — the true feeling of a character — that is all.”

Françoise Sagan

Paris Review interview (1956)

Françoise Sagan Quotes about love

“No one is more conventional than a woman who is falling out of love.”

Françoise Sagan book Dans un mois, dans un an

Dans un mois, dans un an (1957, Those Without Shadows, translated 1957)

“No one, but no one, ever behaves "well" in bed unless they love or are loved — two conditions seldom fulfilled.”

Françoise Sagan

Scars on the Soul (1972)

“I can say everything to you. It's a wonderful feeling. I never could tell Francoise that I don't really love her, that our marriage isn't based on any hones ideal. It's founded on my weariness and boredom. Although those are solid enough bases. Plenty of lasting marriages are build on them, God knows. At least, they're always present.”

Françoise Sagan book A Certain Smile

Un certain sourire (1955, A Certain Smile, translated 1956)

“Nothing becomes some women more than the prick of ambition. Love, on the contrary, may make them very dull.”

Françoise Sagan book Dans un mois, dans un an

Dans un mois, dans un an (1957, Those Without Shadows, translated 1957)

“Love is worth whatever it costs.”

Françoise Sagan book Bonjour tristesse

Bonjour Tristesse (Published in 1954)

“The fact that a woman you love reaches a point in the relationship where she ceases to love you, and despite that you can never bring yourself to scorn or despise her, is very rare indeed.”

Françoise Sagan

Un chagrin de passage (1994, A Fleeting Sorrow, translated 1995)

Françoise Sagan Quotes about life

“Just because life is inelegant doesn't mean we have to behave likewise.”

Françoise Sagan

Scars on the Soul (1972)

“Passion is the salt of life, and that at the times when we are under its spell this salt is indispensable to us, even if we have got along very well without it before.”

Françoise Sagan book Dans un mois, dans un an

Dans un mois, dans un an (1957, Those Without Shadows, translated 1957)

“Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.”

Françoise Sagan

Paris Review interview (1956)

“Only by pursuing the extremes in one's nature, with all its contradictions, appetites, aversions, rages, can one hope to understand a little — oh, I admit only a very little — of what life is about.”

Françoise Sagan

Scars on the Soul (1972)

Françoise Sagan Quotes

“For me writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz.”

Françoise Sagan

Paris Review interview (1956)
Context: For me writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.

“Curiosity is the beginning of all wisdom.”

Françoise Sagan book Dans un mois, dans un an

Dans un mois, dans un an (1957, Those Without Shadows, translated 1957)

“One is never free except in relation to someone else. And when, the relation is based on happiness, it allows the greatest freedom in the world.”

Françoise Sagan

Un peu de soleil dans l'eau froide (1969, Sunlight on Cold Water, translated 1971)

“She'd like to be indispensable; that's what every woman wants…”

Françoise Sagan book Dans un mois, dans un an

Dans un mois, dans un an (1957, Those Without Shadows, translated 1957)

“Very broadly, I think one writes and rewrites the same book. I lead a character from book to book, I continue along with the same ideas. Only the angle of vision, the method, the lighting, change.”

Françoise Sagan

Paris Review interview (1956)

“We always want someone we've treated badly to be gay. It's less upsetting.”

Françoise Sagan book A Certain Smile

Un certain sourire (1955, A Certain Smile, translated 1956)

“Paul had always thought that women were never more serious than when they were naked.”

Françoise Sagan

Un chagrin de passage (1994, A Fleeting Sorrow, translated 1995)

“One must cherish one's effigies, if one can tolerate them, perhaps more lovingly than one cherishes one's intrinsic self.”

Françoise Sagan

That's the ABC of pride. And of humor.
Scars on the Soul (1972)

“Edouard was trying to understand, to find out what he could have done to lose Beatrice's favor. He couldn't know that his unpardonable sin was the fact that he was too deserving.”

Françoise Sagan book Dans un mois, dans un an

Dans un mois, dans un an (1957, Those Without Shadows, translated 1957)

“Desire, even the basest, kind, required the notion of futurity if it was ever to come off. A man without a future, a dying man, was no longer desirable. And however stupid such a reaction might have seemed, Paul knew that if the situation was ever reversed, he would feel the same way about the woman. Desire would have turned into compassion. Which is tantamount to saying that desire would vanish into thin air.”

Françoise Sagan

Un chagrin de passage (1994, A Fleeting Sorrow, translated 1995)

“When a man has dreamed of winning something by a colossal stroke of luck, he is prone to neglect petty but more practical ways of attaining it.”

Françoise Sagan book Dans un mois, dans un an

Dans un mois, dans un an (1957, Those Without Shadows, translated 1957)

“It is healthier to see the good points of others than to analyze our own bad ones.”

Françoise Sagan book A Certain Smile

Un certain sourire (1955, A Certain Smile, translated 1956)

“Unhappiness has nothing to teach, and resignation is ugly.”

Françoise Sagan book Dans un mois, dans un an

Dans un mois, dans un an (1957, Those Without Shadows, translated 1957)

“In love, as in finance, only the rich can get credit.”

Françoise Sagan book Dans un mois, dans un an

Dans un mois, dans un an (1957, Those Without Shadows, translated 1957)

“Jazz music is a form of accelerated unconcern.”

Françoise Sagan book A Certain Smile

Un certain sourire (1955, A Certain Smile, translated 1956)

“No one ever has time to examine himself honestly, and most people look no further than their neighbors' eyes, in which they may see their own reflection.”

Françoise Sagan book Dans un mois, dans un an

Dans un mois, dans un an (1957, Those Without Shadows, translated 1957)

“I never make moral judgments. All I would say is that a person was droll, or gay, or, above all, a bore. Making judgments for or against my characters bores me enormously; it doesn’t interest me at all. The only morality for a novelist is the morality of his esthétique.”

Françoise Sagan

Paris Review interview (1956)

“Lying stimulates one's imagination and ingenuity.”

Françoise Sagan

Un peu de soleil dans l'eau froide (1969, Sunlight on Cold Water, translated 1971)

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