Frances Mayes Quotations

Poems give you the lives of others and then circle in on your own inner world.

Memory is, of course, a trickster.

Anytime the perfume of orange and lemon groves wafts in the window; the human body has to feel suffused with a languorous well-being.

Venice, the most touristy place in the world, is still just completely magic to me.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

The undulent landscape looks serene in every direction. Honey-colored farmhouses, gently placed in hollows, rise like thick loaves of bread set out to cool.