Debra Ollivier > Quotes

“For one of the first pressures that bear down on American girls is the pressure not only to be liked but to be like everyone else. This initial feat of self-transformation often involves loosening one's grip on that quiet sense of inner self and hitching one's wagon to a single standard of beauty. The stress of leaping through that hoop insinuates itself into the young heart and soul with a vengeance, and insecurities go from being hard little buds of confusion to overripe, snarled and tyrannical fruits that hang on the vine as we age.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know About Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“She is focused on living her own full life, following her own agenda and cultivating her actual self, rather than reinventing herself or pining away to be someone she's not.”
― Debra Ollivier, Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl

“Feed your mind. Cultivate impressions and opinions. Know what you think.”
― Debra Ollivier, Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl

“If you forbid [children] from doing what is natural , they will seek it out later in ways that are unnatural and perverse.”
― Debra Ollivier, Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl

“Consider your life your personal currency-and invest it wisely.”
― Debra Ollivier, Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl

“harness your own power though what you keep to yourself”
― Debra Ollivier, Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl

“As the old French proverb warns: “He who fears to suffer suffers from fear.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“[For the French] time...is an ephemeral currency and should be spent doing the things that make life worth living.”
― Debra Ollivier

“Invest your time in what is personally meaningful and relevant”
― Debra Ollivier, Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl

“It's not equality that counts, it's reprocity that counts. Love is not like a balance sheet. There's no such thing as double-entry accounting when it comes to love.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know About Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“Men may be the head of the house, but the women are the neck, and they can turn the head any way they want.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know About Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“Albert Einstein put it differently: “Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.” Smart guy.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“As soon as you notice your first wrinkle and your first white hair, sigh with ease. You are well on your way to becoming who you always wanted to be.” VÉRONIQUE VIENNE French journalist Christophe, who’s had many amorous experiences on both sides of the Atlantic, sums it up this way: “French women are more comfortable being naked than American women.”
― Debra Ollivier, Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl

“Fate. Now that's a loaded word. Like "yoga" or "karma", it's one of those words that slipped out of its native culture and ended up a celebrity with an extreme makeover.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know About Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“One thing you have to give up is attaching importance to what people see in you. —JEANNE MOREAU”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“When Less is More, you often get More with Less. More passion with less planning. More love and intimacy with less information and grief. More freedom with less fretting. And, yes, while we’re at it, more style with less stuff.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“Alexis de Tocqueville took one good hard look at America’s growing colonies and noted: “America is the one country in the world where the most continual care has been taken to trace clearly separated lines of action for the two sexes, and where the wish is for them to walk with equal steps, but always on different paths.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“You have to love men a lot,” she once wrote. “A lot, a lot. You have to love men a lot. Otherwise they are simply unbearable.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“If you stay true to yourself, you will always remain on track, even if that track takes you off the beaten path, to places you could not possibly imagine.”
― Debra Ollivier, Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl

“Admittedly, my focus is on the most redeeming qualities of these creatures, but the exercise here is not to glorify or ennoble them; rather, it is, as Descartes implied, to contrast cultural values in the hopes that we might see our own in a new light.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“author Véronique Vienne recalled how she had to work hard to adapt to the mandated cheerfulness of American culture when she moved from France to the States; she practiced her smile in the mirror, trying her best to look like “Miss Congenial ity,” before concluding that “in this country, the obligation we feel to conform to exalted standards of happiness can be pure misery.”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“She is able to draw the line between who she is and who she is not on every level, so she is able to discriminate without ambivalence—whether it’s about a skirt or a man that simply isn’t right for her life. It also makes it easy for her to ignore the pressure to be all things to all people, and to appreciate the company of herself—with a book, a glass of wine”
― Debra Ollivier, Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl

“Thomas Jefferson took one look at permissive Parisian women and, comparing them to pious American maidens, declared: “A comparison of amazons to angels!” (Too bad he didn’t live long enough to meet Britney Spears.)”
― Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know What French Women Know Of Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind

“As soon as you notice your first wrinkle and your first white hair, sigh with ease. You are well on your way to becoming who you always wanted to be.” VÉRONIQUE VIENNE”
― Debra Ollivier, Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl