French Quotes

France does not practice revenge.

You turned on the radio and heard all kinds of things.

With the piano I'm completely in control of the gestural situation-not that I'm going to play the piece myself, but I know what's difficult, what's impossible.

Whereas Schaeffer and Henry were working like samplers, their idea was to capture those sounds which couldn't be serially calibrated because they were too complex in character.

When the Domaine Musical started up, I wasn't part of it. They were the major players in contemporary music at that time, braodcasting old and new composers' work. And I wasn't one of them.

Well, first I studied piano. I wasn't very satisfied because I though my teachers were dumb... and repressive.

So the ideology was that: use sounds as instruments, as sounds on tape, without the causality. It was no longer a clarinet or a spring or a piano, but a sound with a form, a development, a life of its own.

My sisters were going out with artists and poets, and eventually it was the creative world which attracted me.

I was born in Paris, and I haven't moved, except until now - I live in the suburbs and I hate it.

I wanted to play piano, and that slid quickly into writing - it wasn't enough to play other people's notes: I had to write notes too.

I think I came across Cecil Taylor a bit later, in 65 or 66. That really impressed me - Cecil Taylor is an amazing character... Both his music and the way he approaches the instrument are astonishing.

I probably went to musique concrete concerts - though not the very first ones - at the beginning of the 50s.

I have problems with machines which aren't gestural.

Electronic music used pure sounds, completely calibrated. You had to think digitally, as it were, in a way that allowed you to extend serial ideas into other parameters through technology.

Boulez seemed to me to be a guy who wrote laws. Like a company lawyer.

I have found a very great number of exceedingly beautiful theorems.

But it is impossible to divide a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into fourth powers, or generally any power beyond the square into like powers; of this I have found a remarkable demonstration. This margin is too narrow to contain it.

I am more exempt and more distant than any man in the world.

And perhaps, posterity will thank me for having shown it that the ancients did not know everything.

I will share all of this with you whenever you wish.

It is impossible for any number which is a power greater than the second to be written as a sum of two like powers. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.

Little opportunities should be improved.

A good historian is timeless; although he is a patriot, he will never flatter his country in any respect.

If we were faultless we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate.

Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.

Children are excellent observers, and will often perceive your slightest defects. In general, those who govern children, forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.

Nothing is more despicable than a professional talker who uses his words as a quack uses his remedies.

Genuine good taste consists in saying much in few words, in choosing among our thoughts, in having order and arrangement in what we say, and in speaking with composure.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than in enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than in expectation.