Frances Mayes Quotes

Quotes about:

• Life offers you a thousand chances... all you have to do is take one.

  Frances Mayes

  Chance, Thousand, Offers

  "Under the Tuscan Sun". www.imdb.com. September 20, 2003.

  46 Copy quote

• There is no technique, there is just the way to do it. Now, are we going to measure or are we going to cook?

  Frances Mayes

  Technique, Way, Cooks

  38 Copy quote

• It’s daunting to find the language so foreign, so distant, but also so thrilling. One is absolved of responsibility when the language is incomprehensible.

  Frances Mayes

  Travel, Responsibility, Language

  36 Copy quote

• A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice.

  Frances Mayes

  Chinese, Alive, Poet

  25 Copy quote

• I had the urge to examine my life in another culture and move beyond what I knew.

  Frances Mayes

  Moving, Culture, Urges

  16 Copy quote

• The world cracks open for those willing to take a risk.

  Frances Mayes

  Risk, Cracks, World

  5 Copy quote

• Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different.

  Frances Mayes

  Different, Would Be, Arbitrary

  "Under the Tuscan Sun". www.imdb.com. September 26, 2003.

  13 Copy quote

• The longer you are in a place, the more you get under its layers.

  Frances Mayes

  Layers

  4 Copy quote

• What has impressed me the most about the Italians whose tables we've sat at is that they are traditional cooks but also outrageously innovative. These people are wild improvisers.

  Frances Mayes

  People, Tables, Innovative

  4 Copy quote

• Sometimes you have to travel back in time, skirting the obstacles, in order to love someone.

  Frances Mayes

  Order, Childhood, Obstacles

  Frances Mayes (2014). “Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir”, p.245, Broadway Books

  7 Copy quote

• One of those flash epiphanies of travel, the realization that worlds you'd love vibrantly exist outside your ignorance of them. The vitality of many lives you know nothing about. I could live in this town, so how is it that I've never been here before today?

  Frances Mayes

  Ignorance, Blue, Giving

  "Frances Mayes travels the globe (sort of), not forgetting about Italy" by Jeanne Cooper, www.sfgate.com. April 20, 2006.

  8 Copy quote

• I'm just fascinated by houses. In another life, I'd have probably trained as an architect. If I had enough money, I'd collect them like other people collect teapots. I don't know why I love them so much. I'm just very interested in the idea of a house as a metaphor for the way one lives.

  Frances Mayes

  Ideas, People, House

  4 Copy quote

• Poems give you the lives of others and then circle in on your own inner world.

  Frances Mayes

  Circles, Giving, World

  5 Copy quote

• Everything I pick up seems to lure me away. Everything I do in my daily life begins to feel like striking wet matches. The need to travel is a mysterious force. A desire to 'go' runs through me equally with an intense desire to 'stay' at home. An equal and opposite thermodynamic principle. When I travel, I think of home and what it means. At home I'm dreaming of catching trains at night in the gray light of Old Europe, or pushing open shutters to see Florence awaken. The balance just slightly tips in the direction of the airport.

  Frances Mayes

  Running, Dream, Home

  8 Copy quote

• All afternoon in the deck chair, I try to describe to my notebook the colors of the water and sky. How to translate sunlight into words?

  Frances Mayes

  Notebook, Color, Sky

  7 Copy quote

• The Only Thing More Surprising Than the Chance She's Taking... Is Where It's Taking Her.

  Frances Mayes

  Chance, Surprising

  "Under the Tuscan Sun". www.imdb.com. September 20, 2003.

  4 Copy quote

• I find that other countries have this or this, but Italy is the only one that has it all for me. The culture, the cuisine, the people, the landscape, the history. Just everything to me comes together there.

  Frances Mayes

  Country, People, Together

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

  4 Copy quote

• The Italians have their priorities right: They're driven, they do their work, but they really enjoy the day-to-day and they don't put off the enjoyment of the everyday for some future goal.

  Frances Mayes

  Goal, Priorities, Everyday

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

  5 Copy quote

• The words 'forse che si,' 'forse che no', 'perhaps yes,' 'perhaps no,' repeat along all paths.

  Frances Mayes

  Path, Repeats

  7 Copy quote

• Like fanning through a deck of cards, my mind flashes on the thousand chances, trivial to profound, that converged to re-create this place. Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different. Where did the expression "a place in the sun" first come from? My rational thought process cling always to the idea of free will, random event; my blood, however, streams easily along a current of fate.

  Frances Mayes

  Fate, Expression, Blood

  4 Copy quote

• Indecision is a virus that can run through an army and destroy its will to win or even to survive.

  Frances Mayes

  Running, Army, Winning

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• The undulent landscape looks serene in every direction. Honey-colored farmhouses, gently placed in hollows, rise like thick loaves of bread set out to cool.

  Frances Mayes

  Looks, Landscape, Honey

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• Although I am a person who expected to be rooted in one spot forever, as it has turned out I love having the memories of living in many places.

  Frances Mayes

  Memories, Forever, Spots

  7 Copy quote

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