My Life in France

My sievelike mind didn’t want to lock away dates and details; it wanted to float and meander. If I mixed all those facts and theses up with a little gelatine and egg white, I wondered, would they stick together better?

I am afraid that surprise, shock, and regret is the fate of authors when they finally see themselves on the page

the Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution, which has been kind enough to display artifacts from my career, including my entire kitchen

Wharton cracked: “Listen, I can stand it if a man pees on my foot, but, by God, when he tries to tell me it’s raining, that’s too much!”

There are only four great arts: music, painting, sculpture, and ornamental pastry—architecture being perhaps the least banal

amuse-gueules au fromage (hot pâtes feuilletées topped with cheese, served in the living room with Krug champagne); rissolettes de foie gras Carisse; filet de boeuf Matignon (served with a nearly perfect Bordeaux, Château Chauvin 1929); les fromages (Camembert, Brie de Melun, Époisses, Roquefort, Chèvre); fruits rafraîchis; gâteau de demisiècle; café, liqueurs, hundred-year-old Cognac; Havana cigars and Turkish cigarettes.

old age is a state of mind and a function of mass hypnosis rather than an absolute.”

divorced I had become from old Pop and his type—moneyed, materialistic, not at all introspective—and how profoundly, abysmally, stupefyingly apathetic his world-view had rendered me.

It was an enormous, old-fashioned, ornate building across from the Casino. What a treat! It had a splendid Louis XVI–style dining room, with black-and-white Carrara-marble pillars, gilt molding, Cupids, murals of virginal nude swillowing about forest-glen fountains,splendiferous

terrine de lapin de garenne, quiche Lorraine, galantine de volaille, gnocchi à la Florentine, vol-au-vent financière, choucroute garni à l’Alsacienne, crème Chantilly, charlotte de pommes, soufflé Grand Marnier, risotto aux fruits de mer, coquilles Saint-Jacques, merlan en lorgnette, rouget au safron, poulet sauce Marengo, canard à l’orange, and turbot farci braisé au champagne.