'French Women Don't Get Fat' has become something of a phenomenon.

Of course there are fat French women. There are fat people everywhere.

When I was 20, I went to Paris and tried to meet French women. It didn't work.

French women will always look up at a man, even if he is four inches shorter than she is.

I don't think it's by accident that I was first attracted to translating two French women poets.

I am not a great French woman. George Sand, Marguerite Duras and Simone de Beauvoir are great French women.

French women don't have too many clothes - a few good pieces that last for a while and are classic and timeless.

I think French women tend to keep it simple. I'd say try the less-is-more approach, which is not always easy to get right.

I'm 50% Asian actually, so yes I was born in Paris but I feel more international than French so I can't talk about French women.

I think French women are incredibly comfortable in their skin, whereas in the States people are striving more for one beauty ideal.

Tom Ford once told me that he found French women sexier than American ones. He said, 'Americans are too clean...' I took no offense.

No one could touch the home cooking of an Italian woman. French women, they are very intelligent, very sexy - but they don't like to cook.

French women famously take care over their appearance, but this wasn't instilled in me as I grew up. I was taught that beauty comes from different places, from the inside and from the outside.

You need mystery. You actually do. I think that's what foreign women, French women in particular, are good at. There's still a sense that you need to keep some of the unknown because that's where the soul resides, or something.

The French view is really one of balance, I think... What French women would tell me over and over is, it's very important that no part of your life - not being a mom, not being a worker, not being a wife - overwhelms the other part.

It's funny because I think that both France and Britain are known for their distinctive styles, and everyone says that France is so chic and elegant but I think, more than that, French women are renowned for dressing in what suits them.

The great thing about American women is their energy and the way they love to dress. French women don't really dress; they are too conservative, as it's always a question of money. In America, women are powerful and strong, determined. If they want to be an object, they choose to be in control.

What I like about the American woman is she usually has a lot of dynamism. In the U.S., women have a tendency to go forward, to be more exaggerated than in Europe. Many times the rough ideas come from the States, then they are refined in Europe. The American women and the French women are still the best-dressed.

French women love to shop and prepare food. They love to talk about what they have bought and made. It's a deeply natural love, but one that is erased in many other cultures. Most French women learn it from their mothers, some from their fathers. But if your parents aren't French, you can still learn it yourself.

When I was in my teens and 20s, I looked to older Italian and French women. They always seemed so incredibly attractive to me because of their confidence. And because their faces had evidence of age: lines, dark circles, and half-lidded eyes, it made that confidence so rebellious. And that was incredibly attractive to me.

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