My family was blue collar, a middle-class kind of thing. My father was born in Detroit, Italian-American. My mother is English. She acted on the stage with Diana Dors. Her parents were French.
I went to a French immersion school, and French-Canadian improv is a big thing, and we had an improv team at school, and 12 of us would get up and make things up against other elementary schools. I'd always wanted to perform, and that was just another extension of it.
I've always wondered why there isn't a great French novel about the German occupation. The nouveau roman authors weren't interested in telling that sort of thing.
These irresponsible acts, which cannot have any justification whatsoever, are to be fully condemned. In these appalling circumstances, I want to offer you the most sincere condolences, both in my name and in that of the French people.
I just dreamed about living in Paris and being French. I always loved the visual arts, film and theatre, and I hoped to be involved in creating beautiful products and images.
The average Hollywood film star's ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend.
All my life, I have loved balloons - all balloons - the heavy English sort, immense and round, that have to be pushed about, and the gay, light, gas-filled French ones that soar into the air the moment you let go of them.
In France, everyone speaks French 'cause they think it's cool. Gives 'em, gives 'em an excuse to smoke.
I checked on the Internet this morning, and I realized that with five individual world titles, I was level with my elders Florian Rousseau and Arnaud Tournant, who were the sprint leaders in France when I started at the French Institute of Sports and taught me everything. I had the chance to overtake them, and I did it.
I remember walking the dog one day, I saw a car full of teenage girls, and one of them rolled down the window and yelled, 'Marc Jacobs!' in a French accent.
I don't think it's a low point being in the finals of the French Open, three points away from the victory.
In an Indian kitchen, the focus is on getting the job or dish done right in whatever way possible; however, in a French kitchen there's a clear hierarchy, and a chef has to know where their skills are and not go beyond them.
French cinema allows women to look... a certain way and be talented at the same time.
French women have been made beautiful by the French people - they're very aware of their bodies, the way they move and speak, they're very confident of their sexuality. French society's made them like that.
I'm most impressed by the Russian writers, so I love reading the works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Another author who has informed the way I think is the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal.
I've heard though that there is a younger generation of tonal French composers who are reacting with vigour.
I think the French Open, in many ways, brought out a certain characteristic in me and in my game that was already there. Just the circumstances allowed for it to be able to show.
In 1800, in the first interparty contest, the Federalists warned that presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson, because of his sympathy expressed at the outset of the French Revolution, was 'the son of a half-breed Indian squaw' who would put opponents under the guillotine.
I kind of just want to look like a cool French girl in the Sixties most of the time. Or TLC.
It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led to take their geese for swans.
Who can doubt that between the English and the French, between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differences of character which have profoundly affected and still affect the course of history?
It was always said that the big distinction between the French and the English is that the English are intelligent and the French are intellectual.
As the French say, there are three sexes - men, women, and clergymen.
The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth.
Somebody was telling me about the French Army rifle that was being advertised on eBay the other day - the description was, 'Never shot. Dropped once.
But the French writers always had more originality and independence than others, and that regulator, which elsewhere was religion, long since ceased to exist for them.
In my day, MI6 - which I called the Circus in the books - stank of wartime nostalgia. People were defined by secret cachet: one man did something absolutely extraordinary in Norway; another was the darling of the French Resistance. We didn't even show passes to go in and out of the building.
English people don't have very good diction. In France you have to pronounce very particularly and clearly, and learning French at an early age helped me enormously.
In France, they call the people who come to the theatre 'les spectateurs'; in Britain and Ireland, they are the audience, the people who listen. This does not mean the French are not interested in language. On the contrary. It actually says more about the undeveloped visual sense over here.
We won the European Championship last September and now the world title. That is some year for French beach soccer! Now comes the hard part. We have to keep improving and that's difficult because it's tough to do better than winning a world title.
The genius of the French language, descended from its single Latin stock, has triumphed most in the contrary direction - in simplicity, in unity, in clarity, and in restraint.
When I was 18, I left Dublin and moved to Paris. I didn't speak French. I didn't know anyone. I felt like a fish out of water.
The French people need to have all the facts so they can choose. And I won't be running away from it or hiding from it.
In addition to the research, I enjoyed learning French and assimilating the culture of another country.
At one point I couldn't move or get out of bed or anything. I developed blood clots because I'd been completely inactive. Then they thought - because the pain was so much - I had an infection in the bones, so they gave me pills, which gave me a tummy infection. It's like a French farce.
French fries. I love them. Some people are chocolate and sweets people. I love French fries. That and caviar.