Top 70 Françoise Sagan Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Money may not buy happiness, but I’d rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.”

— Françoise Sagan

2. “I have loved to the point of madness; that which is called madness, that which to me, is the only sensible way to love.”

— Françoise Sagan

3. “Curiosity is the beginning of all wisdom.”

— Françoise Sagan

4. “There is a certain age when a woman must be beautiful to be loved, and then there comes a time when she must be loved to be beautiful.”

— Françoise Sagan

5. “In love, as in finance, only the rich can get credit.”

— Françoise Sagan

6. “At night, time becomes a calm sea. It goes on for ever.”

— Françoise Sagan

7. “A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to take it off of you.”

— Françoise Sagan

8. “I like men to behave like men. I like them strong and childish.”

— Françoise Sagan

9. “There are moments when you feel trapped, ill at ease. A year later the same feeling can turn out to be the theme of a book.”

— Françoise Sagan

10. “Whisky, gambling and Ferraris are better than housework.”

— Françoise Sagan

11. “If you don’t have imagination you’re lost. But it’s a virtue that’s becoming increasingly rare, especially in its higher form: spontaneity. Mad, happy spontaneity.”

— Françoise Sagan

12. “I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.”

— Françoise Sagan

13. “I always believe things are going to work out.”

— Françoise Sagan

14. “Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.”

— Françoise Sagan

15. “Love lasts about seven years. That’s how long it takes for the cells of the body to totally replace themselves.”

— Françoise Sagan

16. “I think the best way to waste time is to try to save time.”

— Françoise Sagan

17. “The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read.”

— Françoise Sagan

18. “It would be bad form for me to describe people I don’t know and don’t understand.”

— Françoise Sagan

19. “Nothing brings on jealousy like laughter.”

— Françoise Sagan

20. “One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter.”

— Françoise Sagan

21. “One partner is always more in love than the other.”

— Françoise Sagan

22. “All my life, I will continue obstinately to write about love, solitude and passion among the kind of people I know. The rest don’t interest me.”

— Françoise Sagan

23. “I dreamt of being a writer once I started to read. I started to write ‘Bonjour Tristesse’ in bistros around the Sorbonne. I finished it, I sent it to editors. It was accepted.”

— Françoise Sagan

24. “We are torn between the craving to know and the despair of having known.”

— Françoise Sagan

25. “My love of pleasure seems to be the only consistent side of my character. Is it because I have not read enough?”

— Françoise Sagan

26. “If you treat life well, life is usually good to you. And I love life. There’s a long-standing affair between us.”

— Françoise Sagan

27. “It amused me to think that one can tell the truth when one is drunk and nobody will believe it.”

— Françoise Sagan

28. “People respect unhappiness and find it especially hard to forgive success.”

— Françoise Sagan

29. “When you make a decision to write according to a set schedule and really stick to it, you find yourself writing very fast. At least I do.”

— Françoise Sagan

30. “Writing is just having a sheet of paper, a pen and not a shadow of an idea of what you are going to say.”

— Françoise Sagan

31. “There is no such thing as an ideal man. The ideal man is the man you love at the moment.”

— Françoise Sagan

32. “Art must take reality by surprise. It takes those moments which are for us merely a moment, plus a moment, plus another moment, and arbitrarily transforms them into a special series of moments held together by a major emotion.”

— Françoise Sagan

33. “He lifted me up and held me close against him, my head on his shoulder. At that moment I loved him. In the morning light he was as golden, as soft, as gentle as myself, and he would protect me.”

— Françoise Sagan

34. “No one is more conventional than a woman who is falling out of love.”

— Françoise Sagan

35. “Illness is the opposite of freedom. It makes everything impossible.”

— Françoise Sagan

36. “Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.”

— Françoise Sagan

37. “Passion is the salt of life, and that at the times when we are under its spell this salt is indispensable to us, even if we have got along very well without it before.”

— Françoise Sagan

38. “You should celebrate the end of a love affair as they celebrate death in New Orleans, with songs, laughter, dancing and a lot of wine.”

— Françoise Sagan

39. “I found myself both touched and irritated by the discovery that she was vulnerable.”

— Françoise Sagan

40. “Love is worth whatever it costs.”

— Françoise Sagan

41. “To jealousy, nothing is more frightful than laughter.”

— Françoise Sagan

42. “When man, Apollo man, rockets into space, it isn’t in order to find his brother, I’m quite sure of that. It’s to confirm that he hasn’t any brothers.”

— Françoise Sagan

43. “To live, in fact, means resolve everything so you can be satisfied. And that is not so easy.”

— Françoise Sagan

44. “I feel sorry for men. They have more problems than women, because they now have to compete with women.”

— Françoise Sagan

45. “I did not find him absurd. I saw he was kind, that he was on the verge of real love. I thought it would be nice for me to be in love with him, too.”

— Françoise Sagan

46. “For what are we looking for if not to please? I do not know if the desire to attract others comes from a superabundance of vitality, possessiveness, or the hidden, unspoken need to be reassured.”

— Françoise Sagan

47. “Unhappiness has nothing to teach, and resignation is ugly.”

— Françoise Sagan

48. “It isn’t common sense that is paramount in this world, it’s wishful thinking.”

— Françoise Sagan

49. “No one, but no one, ever behaves ‘well’ in bed unless they love or are loved – two conditions seldom fulfilled.”

— Françoise Sagan

50. “The happiness of others is never bearable for very long...”

— Françoise Sagan