Frances Mayes Quotes

38 quotes in 657 categories

• Italy's siren call lures us more and more.
• The words 'forse che si,' 'forse che no', 'perhaps yes,' 'perhaps no,' repeat along all paths.
• Whatever a guidebook says, wether or not you leave somewhere with a sense of the place is entirely a matter of smell and instinct.
• 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…
• May summer last a hundred years.
• Never lose your childish enthusiasm and things will come your way.
• I’ll always marvel at the liveliness of southern speech-so full of metaphor and hyperbole, quirks and vividness.
• 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.
• Venice, the most touristy place in the world, is still just completely magic to me.
• Anytime the perfume of orange and lemon groves wafts in the window; the human body has to feel suffused with a languorous well-being.
• 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…
• 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…
• There is no technique, there is just the way to do it. Now, are we going to measure or are we going to cook?
• Five tender apricots in a blue bowl, a brief and exact promise of things to come.
• Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different.
• Life offers you a thousand chances... all you have to do is take one.
• The Only Thing More Surprising Than the Chance She's Taking...Is Where It's Taking Her!
• 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…
• 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…
• The world cracks open for those willing to take a risk.

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