Colette Zitate

„Was für ein wundervolles Leben ich hatte! Ich wünschte nur, ich hätte es früher bemerkt.“

„Vielleicht werde ich im Spiegel nun bald eine freudestrahlende Mitsou sehen. Vielleicht auch eine weinende. Auf jeden Fall aber wird es nicht mehr die Mitsou von früher sein. Diese dumme, diese vernünftige, die nicht lachte und niemals weinte, diese arme Mitsou, die nichts hatte, nicht einmal einen eigenen Kummer.“

„Es gibt im Leben nur drei große Ereignisse: den Tod, die Berühmtheit oder die Liebe. Mein lieber blauer Leutnant, welches von den dreien wird mir wohl als erstes auf den Kopf oder ins Herz fallen?“

„Wo die Moral sich nicht überall einnistet. Ich habe einen Sittenrichter geboren.“

„Hoffnung kostet nichts.“

„Du wirst törichte Dinge tun, aber tue sie mit Begeisterung.“

„Unsere perfekten Gefährten haben nie weniger als vier Füße.“

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

“Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.”

“Hope costs nothing.”

“There are no ordinary cats.”

“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”

“look for a long time at what pleases you, and longer still at what pains you…”

“Music is love in search of a word.”

“So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.”

“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.”

“Can it be that chance has made me one of those women so immersed in one man that, whether they are barren or not, they carry with them to the grave the shrivelled innocence of an old maid?”

“Boredom helps one to make decisions.”

“My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.”

“Her childhood, then her adolescence, had taught her patience, hope, silence and the easy manipulation of the weapons and virtues of all prisoners.”

“Nothing ages a woman like living in the country.”

“For to dream and then to return to reality only means that our qualms suffer a change of place and significance.”

“It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.”

“We only do well the things we like doing.”

“You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.”

“I went to collect the few personal belongings which… I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.”

“Sometimes in my very happiest moments, I feel like crying. My eyes grow dim, my heart seems to choke me. I would like to be sure, in such times of anguish, that everybody loves me; that there is nowhere in the world a sad dog behind a closed door, that no evil will ever come…”

“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."

(, 1964)”

“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.”

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

“No one asked you to be happy. Get to work.”

“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.”

“Be happy.
It's one way of being wise.”

“Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings.”

“Total absence of humor renders life impossible.”

“What a delight it is to make friends with someone you have despised!”