In a country like France, so ancient, their history is full of outstanding people, so they carry a heavy weight on their back. Who could write in French after Proust or Flaubert?
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The French are very individualistic.
The French are pretty thin-skinned. The few times I mentioned a French writer in 'City Boy,' the relatives would ring up in high dudgeon. I once wrote a mocking review of Marguerite Duras in the 'New York Review of Books,' and good friends of mine in France got very angry.
The French, I think, in general, are strangely prolix in their natural history.
I am not a great French woman. George Sand, Marguerite Duras and Simone de Beauvoir are great French women.
France is very welcoming to foreign writers.
I must represent France, and I want to be elegant, and I want the French people to be proud of me, you know.
French are what they are without excusing themselves to be.
The funny thing in France is that writers are not allowed to retire, because the French government say you are still earning money from books you wrote 20 years ago.
When I wrote about the French Revolution, I didn't choose to write about aristocrats; I chose characters who began their lives in provincial obscurity.
There is a certain dignity to being French.
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