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 More Quotes by Frances Mayes More Quotes From 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. Frances Mayes together country people Memory is, of course, a trickster. Frances Mayes tricksters courses memories 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 house people ideas 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 healthy eye europe 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 priorities everyday goal The longer you are in a place, the more you get under its layers. Frances Mayes layers It's kind of amazing that people will travel because of a book. I admire that. Frances Mayes kind book people Poems give you the lives of others and then circle in on your own inner world. Frances Mayes circles giving world 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 Five tender apricots in a blue bowl, a brief and exact promise of things to come. Frances Mayes apricots blue promise The Only Thing More Surprising Than the Chance She's Taking... Is Where It's Taking Her. Frances Mayes surprising chance 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 differences different country 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 The world cracks open for those willing to take a risk. Frances Mayes cracks risk world 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 As travel pushes me forward, memory keeps dragging me backward. Frances Mayes memories 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 home morning memories 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 choices identity moving 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 favorite-words memories two I’ll always marvel at the liveliness of southern speech-so full of metaphor and hyperbole, quirks and vividness. Frances Mayes metaphor speech southern
