Edith Piaf Quotes

1. Don't care what people say. Don't give a damn about their laws.

2. I want to make people cry even when they don't understand my words.

3. I'd like to see one person - just one - who would own up to having been a coward.

4. Singing is a way of escaping. It's another world. I'm no longer on earth.

5. As far as I'm concerned, love means fighting, big fat lies, and a couple of slaps across the face.

6. If God has allowed me to earn so much money, it is because He knows I give it all away.


7. All I've done all my life is disobey.

8. Death does not exist.

9. Death is the beginning of something.

10. I don't want to die an old lady.

11. I think you have to pay for love with bitter tears.

12. I wouldn't mind at all coming back to earth after my death.






13. I've been thinking about Jesus. Don't you find it a bit strange that, since He was living with His family and all, He up and left them just when they needed him most?

14. I've always wanted to sing, just as I've always known that one day I would have my own niche in the annals of song. It was a feeling I had.

15. Money? How did I lose it? I never did lose it. I just never knew where it went.




16. People say that I could sing the phone book and make it sound good.

17. To be successful in my native France, where people speak the same language and understand me, is nothing.

18. Tell me what you'd like to hear me sing. I'll sing whatever you like, after which I'll take up a collection, if you don't mind.


19. For me, sleeping is a waste of time. I'm afraid to sleep. It's a form of death.

20. You'll see, after I'm dead I'll come back and pinch your feet.

21. I am stupid. I always told you I was. I hate myself, and I have no confidence in myself whatsoever.

22. I want it understood that I don't want to touch a penny for that song, which I wrote in memory of Marcel.








23. God, am I scared! I don't know why, but I'm terrified. I know something's going to happen to me. I don't know what, but I feel it will be something awful, something irreparable.

24. I lived in Barbes, in Pigalle, in Clichy, in the chic sections of town, in the theater districts, the streets where the whores hung out.




25. I was hungry. I was cold. But I was also free. Free not to get up in the morning, not to go to bed at night, free to get drunk if I liked, to dream... to hope.

26. You'll see how much your little bird has changed.



27. I can't stand the smell of cheese!



28. Your whole personality is in your nose.

29. I'm trying diplomatically to turn him out of my house, but it's not easy because it goes without saying that he's privy to certain things and doesn't hesitate to use them.

30. Why be so stingy? After all, you're not paying for it!



31. It's high time I made amends to all the people I hurt through the years.


32. My life when I was a kid might strike you as awful, but actually it was beautiful.

33. Your songs filled with sunshine, with wild girls, with passionate love, will take you a long way.

34. Have you forgotten that you're talking to Edith Piaf!


35. I kissed him for the first time the afternoon he arrived holding five colored balloons floating on the end of their little strings.

36. I honestly have to have some rest. The medicine I was taking for my rheumatism didn't help matters.

37. As for that other son-of-a-bitch, I can't even remember who he was.

38. I can't tell you how much I miss Paris and everyone there I love!



39. With Marcel Cerdan, I had found my equilibrium. We spent our evenings together like an old married couple.

40. Everyone sleeps like a log, so why in God's name can't I?

41. If at the end of the song I move my arms as though I'm swimming, it's because when I sang it for the first time I wasn't very sure of the words, so I began to move my arms that way to cover it up.





42. I'm doubling everyone's salary.

43. As soon as they leave, the French won't give a damn about your Wild West and your hot-dog vendors in Central Park.

44. If I weren't burning myself out, do you think I'd be able to sing?



45. After it's all over we'll go out and have a drink together!


46. In Miami I had to stop the show twice and couldn't go on, a case of overall fatigue.

47. I'm not with anyone anymore. I cut off all relations, for I've made up my mind to become serious and work very hard.

48. If by chance you should run into Roland Avellys, beware of him, and above all don't lend him any money, for if you do, you'll never see it again.


49. I need a long rest, I don't need sleep anymore and I'm really at the end of my nerves.

50. So this is your three-star restaurant? Congratulations!


51. I'm sure that a good performer could read Baudelaire to a music-hall audience and pull it off.

52. I can't do this to my public!

53. My secretary refuses to give me any money.

54. When I toured with Yves Montand, he opened the performance and I closed it. He scored triumph after triumph, and night after night I stoically bore my cross.

55. Those hands of yours; they're worker's hands. They come from the people, and you have to make sure the people know it.



56. Don't wake me up unless Toto calls, in which case put him right through. I can't bear not hearing from him any longer.

57. I'm going to learn how to write properly. I'll also be going to the dentist, and I plan to join a physical fitness course.

58. Thank you for your kind applause. I've just finished my stint at the cabaret, and it's quite late.


59. I'm not letting you out till you come up with something great! Think about me, it'll inspire you!


60. I'm sure that I've already been dead.

61. First number I have down pat, it'll go fine. Two, three, four and five are OK, so you don't have to worry about them. Number six I'm not sure of.

62. There's something sinister about the house here.



63. The song is part and parcel of my basic repertoire. If you don't want me to sing it, you'll have to ban it.


64. I'm the only one who still believes in Santa Claus!

65. My aim is an international career.


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