Colette (1873–1954,) fully Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, also Colette Willy, was a French writer who produced some of the most memorable female characters in literature. She was a novelist, short-story writer, journalist, essayist, memoirist, actress, and music-hall performer. Her best novels, mainly concerned with feminine independence in experiencing the joys and sorrows of love, are extraordinary for their command of sensual description.
Born in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Burgundy, Colette ghost-wrote her early novels, including the first four Claudine novels (Claudine à l’école (1900,) Claudine à Paris (1901,) Claudine en ménage (1902,) and Claudine s’en va (1903,)) using her first husband’s pseudonym, Willy. From 1904 (the end of their association) to 1916 she wrote under the name ‘Colette Willy.’
In 1906, Colette appeared in music halls in dance and mime, and out of this period came La Vagabonde (1910; The Vagabond, 1955) and L’Envers du Music-hall (1913; Music-Hall Sidelights, 1957.) She also became the mistress of the actress Mathilde “Missy” de Morny—Colette wrote Les Vrilles de la vigne (1908; Tendrils of the Vine) about her affair with Missy.
Colette is one of the most prolific literary geniuses of the modern era and is recognized as one of the great stylists of the French language. Her utmost strength as a writer is an exact sensory evocation of sounds, smells, tastes, textures, and colors of her world. Her most famous novels include Chéri (1920,) La Fin de Chéri (1926; The Last of Chéri, 1932,) la Chatte (1933; The Cat, 1936) and Gigi (1944.)
Colette is the subject of numerous biographies, songs, and films, including the biopic Colette (2018) starring Keira Knightley.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Colette
On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us—ah! what a dream, to live in that!—the other stifles us at the first breath.
—Colette
Topics: Choice, Choices
Look for a long time at what pleases you, and a longer time at what pains you.
—Colette
Topics: Pleasure
My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.
—Colette
Topics: Friends and Friendship
It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.
—Colette
Topics: Manners, Courtesy
It was on that road and at that hour that I first became aware of my own self, experienced an inexpressible state of grace, and felt one with the first breath of air that stirred, the first bird, and the sun so newly born that it still looked not quite round.
—Colette
Topics: Beginnings
What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.
—Colette
Researchers, with science as their authority, will be able to cut Animals up, alive, into small pieces, drop them from a great height to see if they are shattered by the fall, or deprive them of sleep for sixteen days and nights continuously for the purposes of an iniquitous monograph… Animal trust, undeserved faith, when at last will you turn away from us? Shall we never tire of deceiving, betraying, tormenting animals before they cease to trust us?
—Colette
Topics: Science
No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.
—Colette
Topics: Temptation
It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change.
—Colette
Topics: Absence
The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.
—Colette
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writers, Writing
Time spent with cats is never wasted.
—Colette
Topics: Cats, Time
It’s nothing to be born ugly. Sensibly, the ugly woman comes to terms with her ugliness and exploits it as a grace of nature. To become ugly means the beginning of a calamity, self-willed most of the time.
—Colette
Topics: Appearance
There are no ordinary cats.
—Colette
Topics: Cats
Can it be that chance has made me one of those women so immersed in one man that, whether they are barren or not, they carry with them to the grave the shriveled innocence of an old maid?
—Colette
January, month of empty pockets! Let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer’s forehead.
—Colette
Topics: Winter, Seasons
I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.
—Colette
Topics: Adversity
Is suffering so very serious?. I have come to doubt it. It may be quite childish, a sort of undignified pastime—I’m referring to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on a man. It’s extremely painful. I agree that it’s hardly bearable. But I very much fear that this sort of pain deserves no consideration at all. It’s no more worthy of respect than old age or illness.
—Colette
Topics: Suffering
Girls usually have a paper mache face on their wedding day.
—Colette
Topics: Marriage, Weddings
Be happy. It’s one way of being wise.
—Colette
Topics: Wisdom, Happiness
Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either.
—Colette
Topics: Sincerity
The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike.
—Colette
Real poverty is lack of books.
—Colette
Topics: Poverty
One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.
—Colette
Topics: Age, Aging
The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.
—Colette
Topics: Intelligence, Intellectuals
Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.
—Colette
Topics: Smoking
Among all the modernized aspects of the most luxurious of industries, the model, a vestige of voluptuous barbarianism, is like some plunder-laden prey. She is the object of unbridled regard, a living bait, the passive realization of an ideal. No other female occupation contains such potent impulses to moral disintegration as this one, applying as it does the outward signs of riches to a poor and beautiful girl.
—Colette
Topics: Fashion
Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop a routine of the abyss: “It’s four o clock. At five I have my abyss… “
—Colette
Topics: Despair
You do not notice changes in what is always before you.
—Colette
Topics: Change
Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight. For it is the only suffering that we endure without ever becoming used to it.
—Colette
Topics: Jealousy
What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.
—Colette
Topics: Blessings, Living, Life, Happiness
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