Colette

Instead of marrying “at once,” it sometimes happens that we marry “at last.”

— Colette

… that wild, unknown being, the child, who is both bottomless pit and impregnable fortress ….

— Colette

“What are you thinking about, Bel-Gazou?” // “Nothing, Mother.” // An excellent answer. The same that I invariably gave when I was her age.

— Colette

But once I had set out, I was already far on my way.

— Colette

Give me a dozen such heart-breaks, if that would help me to lose a couple of pounds.

— Colette

What a nuisance! Why should one have to eat? And what shall we eat this evening?

— Colette

If only her brain worked as well as her jaws!

— Colette

They [men] forgive us—oh! for many things, but not for the absence in us of their own feelings.

— Colette

Let me not forget that I am the daughter of a woman who bent her head, trembling, over a cactus, her wrinkled face full of ecstasy over the promise of a flower, a woman who herself never ceased to flower, untiringly, during three quarters of a century.

— Colette

She hasn’t had her full ration of kisses-on-the-lips today. She had the quarter-to-twelve one in the Bois, she had the two o’clock one after coffee, she had the half-past-six one in the garden, but she’s missed tonight’s.

— Colette

He shut his eyes while Sasha [the cat] kept vigil, watching all the invisible signs that hover over sleeping human beings when the light is put out.

— Colette