Marseille Quotes

• Marseilles isn't a city for tourists. There's nothing to see. Its beauty can't be photographed. It can only be shared. It's a place where you have to take sides, be passionately for or against. Only then can you see what there is to see. And you realize, too late, that you're in the middle of a tragedy. An ancient tragedy in which the hero is death. In Marseilles, even to lose you have to know how to fight.

  Jean-Claude Izzo

  Hero, Fighting, Cities

  Jean-Claude Izzo (2016). “Total Chaos”, p.28, Penguin

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• I am first of all from La Castellane and Marseille.

  Zinedine Zidane

  Firsts

  "ZZ top". Interview with Andrew Hussey, www.theguardian.com. April 3, 2004.

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• I am working with the enthusiasm of a man from Marseilles eating bouillabaisse, which shouldn't come as a surprise to you because I am busy painting huge sunflowers.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Men, Sunflower, Enthusiasm

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• We have a saying in Marseilles: a man in no hurry gets nowhere fast. I have been in no hurry for eight years.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Men, Eight, Years

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.48, Macmillan

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• Certain streets have an atmosphere of their own, a sort of universal fame and the particular affection of their citizens. One of such streets is the Cannebiere, and the jest: "If Paris had a Cannebiere, it would be a little Marseilles" is the jocular expression of municipal pride. I, too, I have been under the spell. For me it has been a street leading into the unknown.

  Joseph Conrad

  Book, Pride, Paris

  Joseph Conrad (2016). “The Arrow of Gold”, p.7, Joseph Conrad

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• In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Ideas, America

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.4281, Delphi Classics

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• Every day I think about where I come from and I am still proud to be who I am: first, a Kabyle from La Castellane, then an Algerian from Marseille, and then a Frenchman.

  Zinedine Zidane

  Thinking, Who I Am, Proud

  2004 Explaining his identity-his father was a Berber from the Kabylie region of Algeria and Zidane grew up in the Marseille suburb of La Castellane. In the Observer, 4 Apr.

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• As long as I look into the muzzles, nothing can happen to me. Only if he pulls lead am I in danger.

  Hans-Joachim Marseille

  Long, Muzzle, Looks

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• Near Marseilles in the south of France, bouillabaisse is a cult food. In Toulouse and Carcassonne, the bean-based stew cassoulet is a cult food. Spain has paella and a number of others. Italy has so many, its cuisine is practically defined by them.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Numbers, France, Cuisine

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• At that comfortable tavern on Pontchartrain we had a bouillabaisse than which a better was never eaten at Marseilles; and not the least headache in the morning, I give you my word; on the contrary, you only wake with a sweet refreshing thirst for claret and water.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Sweet, Morning, Food

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1869). “Roundabout Papers (from the Cornhill Magazine): To which is Added The Second Funeral of Napoleon”, p.177

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• No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness.

  Andre Gide

  Book, Heart, Leaving

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• My piano has not yet arrived. How did you send it? By Marseilles or by Perpignan? I dream music but I cannot make any because here there are not any pianos . . . in this respect this is a savage country.

  Frederic Chopin

  Dream, Country, Piano

  "Fryderyk Chopin, Korespondencja Fryderyka Chopina". Book by Bronisław Edward Sydow, (2 vols.), Vol. 1, p. 443, 1955.

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• With the broad and powerful swing of the hand which Zola in The Earth gave to his ploughman, L'Auto, journal of ideas and action, is going to fling across France today those reckless and uncouth sowers of energy who are the great professional riders of the world... From Paris to the blue waves of the Mediterranean, from Marseille to Bordeaux, passing along the roseate and dreaming roads sleeping under the sun, across the calm of the fields of the Vendée, following the Loire, which flows on still and silent, our men are going to race madly, unflaggingly.

  Henri Desgrange

  Dream, Powerful, Sleep

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• First New York was a sort of provincial capital, bigger and richer than Manchester or Marseilles, but not much different in its essential spirit. Then, after the war, it became one among half a dozen world cities. Today it has the appearance of standing alone, as the center of culture in the part of the world that still tries to be civilized.

  Malcolm Cowley

  New York, War, Cities

  MALCOLM COWLEY (1967). “Think Back on Us”

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