Quelle histoire! (level=advanced)

I picked up this expression very soon after moving to France; I could hardly help it, it gets used on almost any occasion. Depending on the context, you can traslate histoire as fuss, incident, event, trouble. Quelle histoire = what a fuss, what a pain, what a drama, covering everything from finding change for a parking meter to epic battles with the tax authorities. Ça a été toute une histoire - it was a complete mess. Il a fait un tas d'histoires - he made a whole lot of fuss. It's a useful substitute for, shall we say, ruder expressions. Accompany it with a slight shrug and look totally French.

The opposite is also true: une personne sans histoires is an ordinary person, une vie sans histoires is an uneventful / peaceful life, se dérouler sans histoires is to take place / go forward without incident.