Frances Mayes quotes

I had the urge to examine my life in another culture and move beyond what I knew. (Frances Mayes)
Life offers you a thousand chances... all you have to do is take one. View quote
Frances Mayes
Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different. View quote
Frances Mayes
A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice. View quote
Frances Mayes
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. View quote
Frances Mayes
There is no technique, there is just the way to do it. Now, are we going to measure or are we going to cook? View quote
Frances Mayes
The world cracks open for those willing to take a risk. View quote
Frances Mayes
The longer you are in a place, the more you get under its layers. View quote
Frances Mayes
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. View quote
Frances Mayes
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. View quote
Frances Mayes
Venice, the most touristy place in the world, is still just completely magic to me. (Frances Mayes)
Five tender apricots in a blue bowl, a brief and exact promise of things to come. View quote
Frances Mayes
As travel pushes me forward, memory keeps dragging me backward. View quote
Frances Mayes
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. View quote
Frances Mayes
Sometimes you have to travel back in time, skirting the obstacles, in order to love someone. View quote
Frances Mayes
It's kind of amazing that people will travel because of a book. I admire that. View quote
Frances Mayes
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. View quote
Frances Mayes
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. View quote
Frances Mayes
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? View quote
Frances Mayes
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. View quote
Frances Mayes
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)
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. View quote
Frances Mayes
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. View quote
Frances Mayes
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. View quote
Frances Mayes
I think I went to Italy initially for the art, architecture, food and history, but I stayed there because of the people in Cortona. View quote
Frances Mayes