Elaine Sciolino Quotes

#1. When the sommelier Enrico Bernardo moved to Paris from Italy nearly two decades ago, the world of French gastronomy brutally rejected him. No matter that he had won the competition for best sommelier in Italy; when he asked 30 restaurateurs for work in their wine cellars, all turned him down.

Elaine Sciolino

#2. He told me it was First, by Van Cleef & Arpels.

Elaine Sciolino

#3. The position of vice president does not exist in France; neither does a role comparable that of the first lady of the United States.

Elaine Sciolino

#4. The Italian Renaissance extends beyond food, of course. Just about every major Italian furniture designer now has a shop in Paris, and Le Bon Marche recently opened an outlet for Santa Maria Novella perfumes, elixirs and soaps from Florence on its ground floor.

Elaine Sciolino

#5. When Pope Francis touched down on French soil for the first time in his papacy with a visit to the European Parliament in Strasbourg last November, Ms. Royal was the senior French official there to greet him.

Elaine Sciolino

#6. Massoumeh Ebtekar is the highest-ranking woman in Iran's government, a symbol of President Mohammed Khatami's promise to promote women into high-profile positions.

Elaine Sciolino

#7. I guess the biggest surprise I got going to Iran was that the Iranians really liked me as an American.

Elaine Sciolino

#8. I don't think Iraq could be transformed overnight into a democracy. How can you take a country that doesn't have any kind of tradition of democracy, where its people have been brutalized and repressed for decades, and suddenly impose Jeffersonian ideals?

Elaine Sciolino

#9. Paris will give bicyclists more rights when it installs 4,300 signs throughout the city, allowing them to barrel though red lights and turn right on red.

Elaine Sciolino

#10. In 1981, Ms. Ebtekar was made editor-in-chief of the English-language newspaper 'Kayhan International.' The man who gave her the job was Mr. Khatami, who was then head of the Kayhan publishing house.

Elaine Sciolino

#11. The city of Paris is determined to promote the happiness-on-a-bike fantasy. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo wants to turn the city into the most bike-friendly capital in the world.

Elaine Sciolino

#12. Historically, the French have had a romantic attachment to their bikes. Though the first functioning two-wheeler is thought to have been invented by a German in 1817, it was the French who popularized and marketed the device in the 1860s, giving it the name 'bicycle.'

Elaine Sciolino

#13. Francois Hollande, the president of France, and Segolene Royal, a senior cabinet minister who once ran for that post herself, have an exceptionally complicated relationship. The two lived together for 25 years, raising four children over that time.

Elaine Sciolino

#14. Every day since the start of the Tour de France, the popular 'Le Parisien' newspaper has published a story about a book written with the bicycle in mind.

Elaine Sciolino

#15. In 1991, only two years into the Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice suddenly left her powerful job as the top Russia expert on the National Security Council and went back to California - to get a life.

Elaine Sciolino

#16. France has become the second-largest consumer of pizza per person, per pound, in the world, behind the United States and ahead of Italy.

Elaine Sciolino