Home > Author > Debra Ollivier
1 " 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
2 " Men may be the head of the house, but the women are the neck, and they can turn the head any way they want. "
3 " 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
4 " 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. "
5 " Feed your mind. Cultivate impressions and opinions. Know what you think. "
6 " Consider your life your personal currency-and invest it wisely. "
7 " If you forbid [children] from doing what is natural , they will seek it out later in ways that are unnatural and perverse. "
8 " harness your own power though what you keep to yourself "
9 " [For the French] time...is an ephemeral currency and should be spent doing the things that make life worth living. "
― Debra Ollivier
10 " As the old French proverb warns: “He who fears to suffer suffers from fear. "
11 " Invest your time in what is personally meaningful and relevant "
12 " One thing you have to give up is attaching importance to what people see in you. —JEANNE MOREAU "
13 " 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. "
14 " 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. "
15 " 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. "
16 " 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. "
17 " 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.) "
18 " 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. "
19 " 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. "
20 " 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. "
