Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Frances Mayes
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: April 4
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Fitzgerald
Georgia
Instinct
Somewhere
Leave
Says
Whatever
Wether
Sense
Guidebook
Place
Entirely
Matter
Smell

More quotes by Frances Mayes

Image
the house protects the dreamer the houses that are important to us are the ones that allow us to dream in peace. Guests we've had stop in for a night or two all come down the first morning, ready to tell their dreams.
Frances Mayes
Image
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
Image
Poems give you the lives of others and then circle in on your own inner world.
Frances Mayes
Image
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 sage.
Frances Mayes
Image
There is no technique, there is just the way to do it. Now, are we going to measure or are we going to cook?
Frances Mayes
Image
It's kind of amazing that people will travel because of a book. I admire that.
Frances Mayes
Image
Life offers you a thousand chances... all you have to do is take one.
Frances Mayes
Image
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
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 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.
Frances Mayes
Image
The words 'forse che si,' 'forse che no', 'perhaps yes,' 'perhaps no,' repeat along all paths.
Frances Mayes
Image
May summer last a hundred years.
Frances Mayes
Image
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.
Frances Mayes
Image
Venice, the most touristy place in the world, is still just completely magic to me.
Frances Mayes
Image
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
Image
Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere I would be different.
Frances Mayes
Image
The longer you are in a place, the more you get under its layers.
Frances Mayes
Image
As travel pushes me forward, memory keeps dragging me backward.
Frances Mayes
Image
Italy's siren call lures us more and more.
Frances Mayes
Image
The Dream Lover-what a bold, insightful, and enticing novel. And how vigorously Elizabeth Berg brings us the iconoclastic life of George Sand. Berg writes with such intimacy and compassion that I think she must have some shared ancestral DNA with Sand. I savored every page.
Frances Mayes
Image
I had the urge to examine my life in another culture and move beyond what I knew.
Frances Mayes