I’m a girl from a good family who was very well brought up. One day I turned my back on it all and became a bohemian.

[I've been a vegetarian] since 1962, when I went on French television to denounce conditions of animal slaughter. That is when I became aware of the horror of factory farming, live transports and the killings of farm animals. I have always been sensitive to animal distress but from then on I refused to be involved in such inhuman industrial deaths.

I couldn't give anyone else roots if I was completely rootless myself.

It is sad to grow old but nice to ripen.

They may call me a sinner, but I am at peace with myself.
“You’re only as pretty as you pretend to be.”

I am shocking, impertinent and insolent - that's how it is

I really wanted to die at certain periods in my life. Death was like love, a romantic escape. I took pills because I didn't want to throw myself off my balcony and know people would photograph me lying dead below.

I do not feel that I have suffered great tragedies.

You can be barefoot and have worries. I have really been on the verge of suicide several times - it's a miracle that I am still alive.

I really am a cat transformed into a woman...I purr. I scratch. And sometimes I bite.

My mother used to say that Papa went through life with a rose in his hand. It was a charming notion.

I’m a girl from a good family who was very well brought up. One day I turned my back on it all and became a bohemian.

— Brigitte Bardot