Frances Mayes Quotes - Page 2

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Country Dreams House Memories

I loved every place I lived and traveled. London, Paris, Rome, Venice. I fell hard for Central America and Mexico. In each country, I had fantasies that I could live there.

Frances Mayes

Country, Rome, Paris

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May summer last a hundred years.

Frances Mayes

Summer, Years, May

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Travel releases spontaneity. You become a godlike creature full or choice, free to visit the stately pleasure domes, make love in the morning, sketch a bell tower, read a history of Byzantium, stare for one hour at the face of Leonardo da Vinci's 'Madonna dei fusi.' You open, as in childhood, and--for a time--receive this world. There's visceral aspect, too--the huntress who is free. Free to go, free to return home bringing memories to lay on the hearth.

Frances Mayes

Morning, Memories, Home

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Where you are is who you are. The further inside you the place moves, the more your identity is intertwined with it. Never casual, the choice of place is the choice of something you crave.

Frances Mayes

Moving, Choices, Identity

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When I was twelve, I started reading Eudora Welty, Thomas Wolfe, Flannery O'Connor, James Agee, and - do we dare breathe the name - William Faulkner.

Frances Mayes

Reading, Names, Twelve

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If you've got a plot the size of a car or a tiny yard in Italy, you're going to be growing tomatoes and basil and celery and carrots, and everybody is still connected to the land.

Frances Mayes

Land, Car, Yards

"'Tuscan Sun' author on Italy's pleasures". Interview with A. Pawlowski, www.cnn.com. March 10, 2010.

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the house protects the dreamer; the houses that are important to us are the ones that allow us to dream in peace. Guests we've had stop in for a night or two all come down the first morning, ready to tell their dreams.

Frances Mayes

Dream, Morning, Night

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Venice, the most touristy place in the world, is still just completely magic to me.

Frances Mayes

Venice, Magic, World

"'Tuscan Sun' author on Italy's pleasures". Interview with A. Pawlowski, www.cnn.com. March 10, 2010.

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I would like The Discovery of Poetry to be a field guide to the natural pleasures of language - a happiness we were born to have.

Frances Mayes

Discovery, Fields, Language

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Whatever a guidebook says, wether or not you leave somewhere with a sense of the place is entirely a matter of smell and instinct.

Frances Mayes

Smell, Matter, Instinct

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As travel pushes me forward, memory keeps dragging me backward.

Frances Mayes

Memories

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Where is it written that houses must be beige? Any dun colored house would look better if painted pineapple, cream, ochre, or even a smart sage.

Frances Mayes

Smart, House, Pineapples

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I’ll always marvel at the liveliness of southern speech-so full of metaphor and hyperbole, quirks and vividness.

Frances Mayes

Southern, Speech, Metaphor

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Five tender apricots in a blue bowl, a brief and exact promise of things to come.

Frances Mayes

Blue, Promise, Apricots

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Sometimes the valley below is like a bowl filled up with fog. I can see hard green figs on two trees and pears on a tree just below me. A fine crop coming in. May summer last a hundred years.

Frances Mayes

Summer, Fog, Years

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Going to Europe as a budding cook opened my eyes to food in a different way. When I got to Italy, the first thing I did was put my little basil plants in the ground and watch them turn into big, healthy bushes.

Frances Mayes

Eye, Europe, Healthy

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The urge to travel feels magnetic. Two of my favorite words are linked: departure time. And travel whets the emotions, turns upside down the memory bank, and the golden coins scatter.

Frances Mayes

Memories, Favorite Words, Two

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Never lose your childish enthusiasm and things will come your way.

Frances Mayes

Enthusiasm, Way, Your Children

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Italy's siren call lures us more and more.

Frances Mayes

Sirens, Lure

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I got the idea that to write books would be the best way to spend a life. I never thought of anything else that seemed like half as much fun, although in my next life I would like to be an architect, too, so I can have an easier time restoring houses.

Frances Mayes

Fun, Book, Writing

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After owning a pool, I think the best way to enjoy the water is to have a friend who has a pool.

Frances Mayes

Thinking, Water, Way

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Anytime the perfume of orange and lemon groves wafts in the window; the human body has to feel suffused with a languorous well-being.

Frances Mayes

Orange, Fruit, Body

Frances Mayes (1999). “Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy”, Wheeler Pub Incorporated

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Memory is, of course, a trickster.

Frances Mayes

Memories, Tricksters, Courses

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The Dream Lover-what a bold, insightful, and enticing novel. And how vigorously Elizabeth Berg brings us the iconoclastic life of George Sand. Berg writes with such intimacy and compassion that I think she must have some shared ancestral DNA with Sand. I savored every page.

Frances Mayes

Dream, Writing, Thinking

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Living in a small Italian hilltown, and having lived in a small town in south Georgia, I understand that you can recognize a family gene pool by the lift of an eyebrow, or the length of a neck, or a way of walking.

Frances Mayes

Italian, Eyebrows, Georgia

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Born: April 4, 1940
Occupation: Poet
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