My first rendezvous with Paris in 2003 blossomed into a lasting love affair, carving an indelible mark on my mind, body, and soul. Few cities are as fabulous as the City of Light, and over the years, many, including artists, writers, and actors have tried and hoped to capture its essence through the power of word. Here are 25 of my favorite attempts from those who have tried.

Oui, oui, Paris!

1) Paris is always a good idea. -Audrey Hepburn

2) If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. -Ernest Hemingway 

3) America is my country and Paris is my hometown. -Gertrude Stein

4) When good Americans die, they go to Paris. -Oscar Wilde

5) A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life. -Thomas Jefferson

6) The last time I saw Paris, her heart was warm and gay, I heard the laughter of her heart in every street café. -Oscar Hammerstein II

7) Keep calm and go to Paris. -Unknown

8) It is perfectly possible to be enamoured of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French. -James Baldwin

9) To know Paris is to know a great deal. -Henry Miller

10) People wonder why so many writers come to live in Paris. I’ve been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it’s the best place to pick ideas. Just like Italy, Spain… or Iran are the best places to pick saffron. If you want to pick opium poppies you go to Burma or South-East Asia. And if you want to pick novel ideas, you go to Paris. -Roman Payne

11) Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant. -Honoré de Balzac

12) You know, I sometimes think, how is anyone ever gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony, or a sculpture that can compete with a great city. You can’t. Because you look around and every street, every boulevard, is its own special art form and when you think that in the cold, violent, meaningless universe that Paris exists, these lights. I mean come on, there’s nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune, but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafés, people drinking and singing. For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe. -Owen Wilson 

13) In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator. -Jean Cocteau

14) London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation. -G. K. Chesterson

15) When spring comes to Paris the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise. -Henry Miller

16) Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets – as vast and indestructible as nature itself. -Anne Rice

17) A final reminder. Whenever you are in Paris at twilight in the early summer, return to the Seine and watch the evening sky close slowly on a last strand of daylight fading quietly, like a sigh. -Kate Simon

18) There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even – the French air clears up the brain and does good – a world of good. -Vincent Willem van Gogh

19) The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older – intelligence and good manners. –F. Scott Fitzgerald

20) An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris. -Friedrich Nietzsche

21) In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language. -Mark Twain

22) The chief danger about Paris is that it is such a strong stimulant. -T.S. Eliot

23) Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual. –Angela Carter

24) Paris is the city in which one loves to live. Sometimes I think this is because it is the only city in the world where you can step out of a railway station—the Gare D’Orsay—and see, simultaneously, the chief enchantments: the Seine with its bridges and bookstalls, the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Tuileries Gardens, the Place de la Concorde, the beginning of the Champs Elysees—nearly everything except the Luxembourg Gardens and the Palais Royal. But what other city offers as much as you leave a train? -Margaret Anderson

25) To err is human. To loaf is Parisian. -Victor Hugo

For more wanderlust and life inspiration, check out: 25 Favorite Quotes About London | A Collection of Inspiring Travel Quotes | 50 Favorite Quotes About Women | Around the World in 52 Proverbs | 25 Favorite Quotes About Los Angeles

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