I was signed when I was 19 years old, in 1980. I went to Germany and France. Seeing the world at that time was just an awesome experience for a teenager.
What I think I'm perceived as in France is, like, I'm this leading man always doing strange movies because most of the movies I did, like 'Irreversible' or 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' and a bunch of others, and even in France, they always come out as a particular movie, not like the typical French kind of movies that people know most of the time.
I'd love to follow the Tour de France one day. It's a really exciting spectacle. I've only seen it once as it was coming into Paris and that was very exciting for me. I have memories of that.
We made it known that we were trying to show the reality of France. People think of Paris as the city of love or the city of light, but where you got love you got hate, where you got light you got darkness.
I don't think France is a racist country, I really don't, but we do still have many problems with our immigrant past, and there's a shame that goes with that, that works both ways, in the host and in the post-immigrant generation.
We've been back since July, but I spent some time with the family in the south of France over the summer. We rented a house with another couple and took it easy.
I also had this mistaken dream, fantasy really - perhaps because I'm good at languages - of being able in both Italy and France to become someone else through my fluency in the language.
France has a very important relationship with Germany. But that does not mean that we agree about everything or that two of our universities or companies are not going to compete.
France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you can't tear the toilet paper.
When I did win the Tour, I felt I was feted more in the U.K. for being an Olympic gold medallist... Then I come back to Europe to race, and they're not interested in the Olympic gold; it's about being the winner of the Tour de France - here he is.
Mr. Churchill is proud of Britain's stand alone, after France had fallen and before America entered the War.
After the outbreak of war, in April 1940, we left Geneva with our three children aged 4 years, 2 years and 2 weeks only to become part of the disordered refugee crowds fleeing across France from the German army.
There is a romantic, often misguided, misconception among the British that life in France is akin to life in Paradise.
A lot of folks are still demanding more evidence before they actually consider Iraq a threat. For example, France wants more evidence. And you know I'm thinking, the last time France wanted more evidence they rolled right through Paris with the German flag.
Well, I grew up between Holland and Israel and then moved to France when I was eleven.
In France today, people no longer eat as much heavy food and fat as they did 15 or 20 years ago. These days, French cooking, through the influence of 'grande cuisine,' has become a bit lighter. And we are beginning to discover the original flavors of our produce.
Foucault was the one person I met in France that I could talk to. He was a mensch. You know whether you agree with him or not because you know what he is saying.
There is just one France... one single nation, united in the same destiny.
I have an intense dislike for artificial society. In France, one could lead a free life - to do what one wanted to do without interference or criticism from one's neighbors.
I've been to Paris France and I've been to Paris Paramount. Paris Paramount is better.
Creating a top team and being in a position to win the Tour de France will give me a nice feeling. But I know it is not easy to create a top team from zero. You need good riders, good staff, a lot of preparation and, most important, a lot of sponsors.
When Louis XIV assumed the reins of government France suddenly and wonderfully came to her maturity; it was as if the whole nation had burst into splendid flower.
France is not poetic; she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.
France can certainly accommodate foreign people on its soil long-term, those with foreign citizenship... as long as they respect French laws and French values, which is often a problem on the immigration issue. It's not really a problem with Israel on this topic.
On a visit to Cologne in March 1945, after a heavy bombing, I met hundreds and hundreds of deserters who were squatting in the rubble, many in the deep cellars left from Roman times. They had been hiding there after the retreat from France.
I would like to tell our American, British and Spanish friends that the Iraqi crisis is not a problem between the United States and France, but between those who want to move forward in the logic of war and the international community.
I think America and Britain have a different culture from France. They discovered marketing and consumerism before France.
Of the love or hatred God has for the English, I know nothing, but I do know that they will all be thrown out of France, except those who die there.
As a kid, I wanted to be part of the Lost Generation who came to France.
I wanted to get far away from those who believed in cruelty, so then I went to France, a land of true freedom, democracy, equality and fraternity.
Although all new ideas are born in France, they are not readily adopted there. It seems that they must first commence to prosper in a foreign country.
I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French.
Still, American composers working in France have had a pretty hard time.
France cannot be destroyed. She is an old country who, despite her misfortunes, has, and always will have, thanks to her past, a tremendous prestige in the world, whatever the fate inflicted upon her.
I was in the South of France. I saw a Brownie on a school trip. She was holding up a book. It said on the front 'rough guide'. I thought: 'Yeah' she's not a looker.
For John le Carre, it was always who's betraying who: the hall-of-mirrors kind of thing. When you go back to the '30s, it's a case of good vs. evil, and no kidding. When I have a hero who believes France and Britain are on the right side, a reader is not going to question that.
