„It seems to me almost impossible to work in Paris [he just left Paris] unless one has some place of retreat where one can revive oneself and get back one’s tranquility and poise. Without that one would get hopelessly brutalized.“

— Vincent Van Gogh
„When one steals a flying balloon and animates it to fly over Paris, one should, ideally, have some idea how said balloon normally works.“
— Cassandra Clare
„It is no accident that propels people like us to Paris. Paris is simply an artificial stage, a revolving stage that permits the spectator to glimpse all phases of the conflict. Of itself Paris initiates no dramas. They are begun elsewhere. Paris is simply an obstetrical instrument that tears the living embryo from the womb and puts it in the incubator. Paris is the cradle of artificial births. Rocking here in the cradle each one slips back into his soil; one dreams back to Berlin, New York, Chicago, Vienna, Minsk,. Vienna is never more Vienna than Paris. Everything is raised to its apotheosis. The cradle gives up its babes and new ones take their place. You can real here on the walls Zola lived and Balzac and Dante and Strindberg and everybody who ever was anything. Everyone has lived here some time or other. Nobody dies here...“
— Henry Miller
„One could only damage oneself through the harm one did to others. One could never get directly at oneself.“
— Jean Paul Sartre
„Then me too in Paris for the last two weeks, to see if the Paris of Hemingway and the Paris of Scott Fitzgerald (they were not the same ones; they merely used the same room) had vanished completely or not too.“
— William Faulkner
„So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.“
— Ludwig Wittgenstein