In French culture, the best way of buying time or getting off the hook entirely in a thorny personal situation is to claim that it’s complicated. The French did not invent love, but they did invent romance, so they’ve had more time than any other culture on earth to refine the nuances of its language.

The French have a penchant for absolutism, for thinking that things are all one way or all another, which is why their politics are marked by a general inability to compromise and why they tend to hold their personal opinions until the bitter end, even after they have clearly lost an argument.

... she was a pudding of immaturity and precocious wisdom that had not yet set into a stable mold.

How can you be kissing at a time like this? Have you no respect for the dead?

When you’re used to being in dangerous situations, you develop a sixth sense about your surroundings, about where possible enemies might be lurking, how many steps it will take to reach the next corner on a dead run, the best hiding places if bullets start to fly...

Never run upstairs when someone’s chasing you. Don’t try to quick-draw a man who already has his gun out. Never light a match in the dark in a strange building. Half of staying safe is just keeping your head and being prudent.

It wasn’t playing both sides of the fence – it was betting against yourself but still playing to win – and it encapsulated everything absurd and paradoxical that I loved about the French.

And I had just kissed my ex-girlfriend, who had cried, while my current girlfriend was in jail. So far, it had not been my best day.

I congratulate you on your success stealing the painting.

There are only two things in life,' Bergé said. 'Love and beauty.

This was a crime of passion, but unlike most crimes of passion, it had been meticulously and diabolically well-planned.

Bergé’s yelling had attracted the attention of everyone in the Kibati hall: champagne flutes stopped halfway to heavily painted lips, eyes widened, massive diamonds groaned scornfully in their settings. It was a stationary riot.

On the morning after the daring theft of a priceless James Ensor painting from the Grand Palais in Paris, I was allowed to leave the Les Halles Police Station after only a few hours of questioning.