"To become immortal...and then die."
Patricia asks this question of a famous writer: "What is your greatest ambition in life?" And this quote is his response. It's a paradoxical yet poetic answer, and suggests that he would like to be remembered through his writing, yet also be allowed to leave the world in death. In this way, he characterizes the artistic impulse as a somewhat morbid one, one that is pursuing what goes beyond life: immortality and death.
"I always get interested in girls who aren't right for me."
Michel says this to point out that he knew the entire time that he should not have pursued Patricia and that she wasn't right for him. This speaks to the contradiction between the way that Michel lives his life impulsively, and the fact that his impulses do not always serve him well.
"See? You said last night you couldn't live without me, but you can. Romeo couldn't live without Juliet, but you can."
Patricia says this to Michel at her apartment to call him out on the fact that he says he can't live without her, yet he is unable to be romantic with her. He only wants to get what he wants from her and does not consider her feelings. This quote highlights the two lovers' contrasting priorities; where Patricia wants complexity and romance, Michel wants simplicity and erotic connection.
Patricia: Do you know William Faulkner?
Michel: No. Who's he? Have you slept with him?
Yet another difference between Patricia and Michel is that while he is instinctual and physical, she is literary and cerebral. This exchange at her apartment highlights this key difference between them. It is humorous because while Michel can only think of the immediate world of people Patricia may have slept with besides him, Faulkner isn't just "some guy," but a famous American writer whose work Patricia admires.
"Informers inform, burglars burgle, murderers murder, lovers love."
As they drive through Paris on the night before Michel is caught, Michel says this to Patricia about the fact that he's been found out by the police. This quotation typifies his straightforward philosophy of life, that certain things are just inevitable. Getting ratted out is just as inevitable as murder or theft, or even love.
"If you don't like the sea...or the mountains...or the big city...then get stuffed!"
As he drives through the French countryside in a stolen car at the beginning of the film, Michel extols the virtues of his home country. He suggests that one can find everything one would ever want in France—sea, mountains, and city—and comically tells off anyone who is dissatisfied with all that France has to offer. It is a sweet and silly moment of patriotism from the criminal, whom the viewer would hardly imagine as appreciating the landscape as much as he does.
Patricia: Listen. The last sentence is beautiful. "Between grief and nothing, I will take grief." Which would you choose?
Michel: ...Grief's stupid, l'd choose nothing. It's no better, but grief's a compromise. l want all or nothing.
Patricia reads Michel a line from Faulkner, and asks him what he thinks of the philosophical question posed. True to form, Michel suggests that he is an all-or-nothing kind of person, and sees grief as pointless. This philosophy lines up with what we have seen of Michel's temperament; he is not someone to get caught up in emotions, and lives instinctively rather than reflectively.
"New York Herald Tribune!"
This very simple line, a saleswoman's squawk, has become one of the most famous lines in the film. In contrast to the French of the rest of the script, this is a moment in which we hear Patricia speak—or yell, rather—in her native tongue, as she desperately calls for people to buy her magazine.
"You Americans are dumb. You admire Lafayette and Maurice Chevalier. They're the dumbest of all Frenchmen."
At Patricia's apartment, Michel disparages her for her unrefined taste in French culture. He might be a criminal, but he is smart enough to know that it is passé and "dumb" to like someone as mainstream as Maurice Chevalier.
"It's sad to fall asleep. It separates people. Even when you're sleeping together, you're all alone."
The night they hide out from the police in an acquaintance's apartment, Patricia laments the fact that they have to go to sleep, as sleep separates people for a time. This line shows Patricia's overwhelming desire to connect, to make contact with another person, to understand them, and to feel intimacy.
