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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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… — Frances Mayes Copy Share Image
“Always, I liked the infinitive 'to go.' Let's go, let's go. let's really go. 'Andare' was the first verb I learned to conjugate in… — Frances Mayes Copy Share Image
“[As Garibaldi says,] 'Sleep, my dear Chevalley, sleep, that is what Sicilians want, and they will always hate anyone who tries to wake them...” — Frances Mayes Copy Share Image
All afternoon in the deck chair, I try to describe to my notebook the colors of the water and sky. How to translate sunlight… — Frances Mayes Copy Share Image
Life offers you a thousand chances... all you have to do is take one. — Frances Mayes Copy Share Image
The Only Thing More Surprising Than the Chance She's Taking...Is Where It's Taking Her! — Frances Mayes Copy Share Image
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… — Frances Mayes Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“There are reasons we congregate in these hot spots- to worship beauty and to feel its effects light up the electrolytes in the bloodstream.” — Frances Mayes Copy Share Image
“And my mother, whose radius of travel was short, tied the letters with ribbon and kept them in her desk, When you get the… — Frances Mayes Copy Share Image
I got the idea that to write books would be the best way to spend a life. I never thought of anything else that… — Frances Mayes Copy Share Image
![“[As Garibaldi says,] 'Sleep, my dear Chevalley, sleep, that is what Sicilians want, and they will always hate anyone who tries to wake them...” quote by Frances Mayes](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/89e/frances-mayes-7779_sleep_as-garibaldi-says-sleep-my-dear-chevalle_148800.jpg)
