Frances Mayes Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• It's kind of amazing that people will travel because of a book. I admire that.

  Frances Mayes

  Book, People, Kind

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• May summer last a hundred years.

  Frances Mayes

  Summer, Years, May

  7 Copy quote

• Splendid to arrive alone in a foreign country and feel the assault of difference. Here they are all along, busy with living; they don't talk or look like me. The rhythm of their day is entirely different; I am foreign.

  Frances Mayes

  Country, Differences, Different

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

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

  Frances Mayes

  Blue, Promise, Apricots

  29 Copy quote

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

  Frances Mayes

  Southern, Speech, Metaphor

  4 Copy quote

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

  Frances Mayes

  Memories

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

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

  Frances Mayes

  Enthusiasm, Way, Your Children

  4 Copy quote

• Memory is, of course, a trickster.

  Frances Mayes

  Memories, Tricksters, Courses

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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

  4 Copy quote

• Italy's siren call lures us more and more.

  Frances Mayes

  Sirens, Lure

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• I was born and grew up in Fitzgerald, way down in south Georgia. It was a mill town and my family ran the cotton mill. My grandfather was mayor many times and my family felt deeply rooted to that spot.

  Frances Mayes

  Grandfather, Cotton, Georgia

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

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