For Paris has enough for everybody (so there is no reason for not being there)-

-ah! It has too much for each one of us... I need everything that Paris is.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

Yesterday morning, in a magnificently dull lecture, I absent-mindedly began to scribble the various thoughts and phrases floating through my head in the margin of my notebook...

[You can see that Paris was uppermost in my mind.]

Perfect Parisian gowns by Giambattista Vali

Yves Saint Laurent on the balcony at Place Vaubhan



My heroine Miss Hepburn was a spiritual citizen of the city, too - in later years she would wander the Left Bank with Hubert de Givenchy, exchanging secrets.

With William Holden and Tony Curtis on the set of Paris When It Sizzles

Sabrina: Maybe you should go to Paris. It helped me. Have you ever been there?
Linus Larabee: Oh, yes. Once. I was there for minutes.
Sabrina: Minutes?!
Linus: Changing planes on my way to Iraq on an oil deal.
Sabrina: But Paris isn't for changing planes! It's for changing your outlook. For throwing open the windows and letting in... letting in la vie en rose!
Linus: Paris is for lovers. Maybe that's why I stayed only... minutes.
-From Sabrina

With Carey Grant in Charade

Sabrina: This is what you do on your very first day in Paris. You get yourself, not a drizzle, but some honest-to-goodness rain, and you find yourself someone really nice and drive her through the Bois de Boulogne in a taxi. The rain's very important. That's when Paris smells its sweetest. It's the damp chestnut trees.

With Gary Cooper in the Paris Ritz Love In The Afternoon

Sabrina: I was happy in Paris. I think you would have been, too.

Other great Parisian movies:
Funny Face. Casablanca. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The last ever episode of Sex and the City. And, of course, An American In Paris:

Jerry: You'll always be standing next to me, Lise.
Lise: Maybe not always. Paris has ways of making people forget.
Jerry: Paris? No, not this city. It's too real and too beautiful. It never lets you forget anything. It reaches in and opens you wide, and you stay that way. I know. I came to Paris to study and to paint because Utrillo did, and Lautrec did, and Roualt did. I loved what they created, and I thought something would happen to me, too. Well, it happened all right. Now what have I got left? Paris. Maybe that's enough for some but it isn't for me anymore because the more beautiful everything is, the more it will hurt without you.

The 17-minute finale in tribute to the fair city is one of the greatest dance scenes ever made - Gene Kelly at his spectacular spectacular best! And speaking of Spectacular Spectacular, how would any of us have formed our dreams of Paris without Moulin Rouge?

"I first came to Paris one year ago. It was 1899, the summer of love. The world had been swept up in Bohemian revolution, and I had traveled from London to be a part of it. On a hill near Paris was the village of Montmartre. It was not, as my father had said, a village of sin, but the centre of the Bohemian world, with musicians, painters, and writers. They were known as the 'children of the revolution.' Yes, I had come to live a penniless existence. I had come to write about truth, beauty, freedom... and that which I believed in above all things, love. There was just one problem. I had never been in love."

"While the celebration party raged upstairs, I tried to write. But all I could think about was her... Was she thinking about me?"

"Then I’ll write a song, and—and we’ll put it in the show, and no matter how bad things get, or whatever happens... whenever you hear it, or when you sing it, or whistle it, or hum it, well then you’ll know... it’ll mean— it’ll mean that we love one another."

Satine: And I couldn’t do it, I don’t want to pretend anymore, I didn’t want to lie, I don’t...
Christian: It’s all right. You don’t have to pretend anymore. We’ll leave. We’ll leave tonight.
Satine: Leave? Wha- but the show...
Christian: I don’t care. I don’t care about the show. We love each other, and that’s all that matters.


"Christian, you may see me only as a drunken, vice-ridden gnome whose friends are just pimps and girls from the brothels, but I know about art and love, if only because I long for it with every fibre of my being. She loves you, I know it. I know she loves you."

"Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and then, one not so very special day, I went to my typewriter, I sat down, and I wrote our story. A story about a time, a story about a place, a story about the people, but above all things... a story about love."