Emily In Paris Quotes

I wish I could go to Paris right now.

The truth is,” Olive said, behind a lectern in Paris, “even now, all these centuries later, for all our technological advances, all our scientific knowledge of illness, we still don’t always know why one person gets sick and another doesn’t, or why one patient survives and another dies. Illness frightens us because it’s chaotic. There’s an awful randomness about it.

Although I don't know much about anything, I know that I have a story. I know that it is not over. There are shades and shadows of adventures and people and wild new places. Whatever Paris might turn out to be, and whatever Dr. Epstein is able to do, I want to be there to find out.

The truth is,' Olive said, behind a lectern in Paris, 'even now, all these centuries later, for all our technological advances, all our scientific knowledge of illness, we still don't always know why one person gets sick and another doesn't, or why one patient survives and another dies. Illness frightens us because it's chaotic. There's an awful randomness about it.'" (page 83).

With Eva, I had given no though to the world of adulthood that awaited us. But she had crossed some secret threshold while I was facing the other way, absorbed still by the childish fantasies she had cultivated for us: our talk of traveling the world together; of having a salon in Paris or on the Riviera, where all the famous writers and artists were; of becoming artists ourselves, marrying exotic European strangers and always living close to one another; of how, when our husbands died, we would move together into a great crumbling mansion and be visited by amazing people from around the world. Now, I saw so clearly that all of that had been a silly game. She had a lover, presumably, while I did not even truly know what this vague and glamorous term entailed. She had become a woman, with no thought to warn me that I should be packing away my own childhood, dismantling it piece by piece like a rotten tree house, and preparing myself for the new world.

In the meantime, he anxiously awaited visitors, and on occasion even attempted some visits of his own—including one to his nearby Bellevue neighbor, the charming and notorious courtesan Valtesse de la Bigne. Red-haired and beautiful, Valtesse de la Bigne had brought several rich and titled men to financial ruin. She had also captivated some of the most sophisticated men in town, including Manet, who referred to her as “la belle Valtesse” and had painted her the year before. Born Louise Emilie Delabigne, Valtesse de la Bigne was sufficiently intelligent and charming to draw an entourage of admiring writers and artists such as Manet. Zola also paid court to Valtesse—although in his case from a desire to get the characters and setting right for his upcoming novel Nana. Flattered by his journalistic interest, Valtesse even agreed to show him her bedroom—until then off-limits to all but her most highly paying patrons. Zola (who seems to have limited his visit to note taking) used her over-the-top boudoir as the model for Nana’s bedroom. Even if the fictional Nana was nowhere near the sophisticated creature that Valtesse had become, the bed said it all. It was “a bed such as had never existed before,” Zola wrote, “a throne, an altar, to which Paris would come in order to worship her sovereign nudity.

The Hill Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley, The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter? All, all are sleeping on the hill. One passed in a fever, One was burned in a mine, One was killed in a brawl, One died in a jail, One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife — All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith, The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one? — All, all are sleeping on the hill. One died in shameful child-birth, One of a thwarted love, One at the hands of a brute in a brothel, One of a broken pride, in the search for heart's desire, One after life in far-away London and Paris Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag — All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily, And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton, And Major Walker who had talked With venerable men of the revolution? — All, all are sleeping on the hill. They brought them dead sons from the war, And daughters whom life had crushed, And their children fatherless, crying — All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. Where is Old Fiddler Jones Who played with life all his ninety years, Braving the sleet with bared breast, Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin, Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven? Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago, Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's Grove, Of what Abe Lincoln said One time at Springfield.

Oh, you’re missing so much, Alice,” Emily said. “Books are wonderful. You can get transported away by a good story. If we’re living in a place like this, we can read about Paris or a tropical island and feel like we’re there.

It became evident, that in Paris, only one man could fulfil Heloise’s educational needs, Peter (or as the French called him, Pierre) Abelard, a thirty-seven year old philosopher and teacher

The most somber group of all, however, were the Ryersons of Haverford, Pennsylvania, who were returning home for the funeral of their twenty-one-year-old son, Arthur, a Yale student who been thrown from an open car while motoring on the Easter weekend. The family had received word by telegram in Paris, and Arthur Ryerson Sr. had cabled back to arrange his son’s funeral for April 19, two days after the Titanic was to arrive. His wife, Emily, was being given comfort by two of her daughters, Suzette, aged twenty-one, and Emily, aged eighteen, while thirteen-year-old Jack Ryerson was tended by his tutor, Grace Bowen. The Ryersons were part of Philadelphia Main Line society, named for the fashionable suburban towns built along the Main Line of the Pennsylvania Railroad and a group that would be well represented on the Titanic’s first-class passenger list.

There are no beautiful women writers.’ ‘Yes there are.’ No there aren’t. Well, except for Edna O’Brien, who is actually a kind of genius and gained my undying admiration when she said plots are for precocious schoolboys (Book 2,738, Writers at Work, The Paris Review Interviews, 7th Series, Secker & Warburg, London). ‘Here, look at Emily Dickinson,’ I said, and showed him the passport-sized photo on the back cover of the Collected Poems. ‘Her face, two prunes in porridge.’ ‘I don’t know, I think she looks nice,’ he said. ‘Nice?’ ‘She does. She looks interesting.’ Reader, pick any Brontë. Any one, doesn’t matter. What do you see? You see intelligence, you see an observer, you see distance, you don’t see beauty.