Arnaud: This afternoon, I will meet the girl in Bordeaux for whom my love is unrequited. She just told me that she is pregnant once again. I will binge-drink to celebrate it.
symonne torpy
Cecily, on work culture.
Cecily: In Paris, there is no such concept as “watercooler conversation”. It’s called a communal cigarette break. And it can happen up to thirty times a day. Note to self: spend salary on cigarettes, ergo, increase end of year bonus. Je fume, donc je suis.
Maurice, on mental health.
Maurice: In 2003, they put me in a mental hospital and diagnosed me with bipolar. But I wouldn’t take their fucking meds. I’m proud to be bipolar!
Cecily, on relative poverty.
Cecily: When I was poor in Paris, I couldn’t afford a Vogue magazine to feed me like Carrie Bradshaw. Instead, I took Übers.
Christopher, on Oxford.
Christopher: I do not know the word to which you refer, however, I did go to Oxford.
Cecily, on a destructive kind of love.
Cecily: Just one day, I want to be on the train to Inverness and catch a man’s eye. We’d fall easily into a Lady Macbeth and Macbeth kind of love.
Cecily, on writing.
Cecily: I want to write postcards, not extended literature!
Two friends, on gardens.
Cecily: Kipling once wrote, “Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh, how beautiful’, and sitting in the shade”.
Ishmael: I like that. How can I use it?
Cecily: Well, for me it means something about embracing motivated change in all forms. Making active decisions. Never getting complacent. We grow our gardens — alone or with others — and some seasons are made for poppies and others for Japanese maples and others for stones or sand to be tilled gently.
Ishmael: That’s beautiful.
Cecily: It’s beautiful or it’s trite. But sometimes there is beauty in the trite.
Cecily, on mediocrity.
Cecily: I do not wish to mellow out in my own mediocrity, and I certainly won’t be accepting yours.
Two friends, on depression.
Cecily: It’s Sunday, so I’m reading up on clinical depression.
Jonathan: I cannot wait for humanoids to replace human beings. Depression will disappear and robotic laughs will overwhelm the world.
thedailymails 