Frances Mayes
Frances Mayes
Frances Mayes is an American university professor, poet, memoirist, essayist, and novelist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
Date of Birth4 April 1940
CountryUnited States of America
eye europe healthy
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.
grandfather cotton georgia
I was born and grew up in Fitzgerald, way down in south Georgia. It was a mill town and my family ran the cotton mill. My grandfather was mayor many times and my family felt deeply rooted to that spot.
flower skirts balconies
...outrageous flowers swagging off balconies like bright skirts of ballgowns...
book people kind
It's kind of amazing that people will travel because of a book. I admire that.
layers
The longer you are in a place, the more you get under its layers.
thinking water way
After owning a pool, I think the best way to enjoy the water is to have a friend who has a pool.
goal priorities everyday
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.
italian eyebrows georgia
Living in a small Italian hilltown, and having lived in a small town in south Georgia, I understand that you can recognize a family gene pool by the lift of an eyebrow, or the length of a neck, or a way of walking.
land car plot
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 and celery and carrots, and everybody is still connected to the land.
memories
As travel pushes me forward, memory keeps dragging me backward.
ignorance blue giving
One of those flash epiphanies of travel, the realization that worlds you'd love vibrantly exist outside your ignorance of them. The vitality of many lives you know nothing about. The breeze lifting a blue curtain in a doorway billows just the same whether you are lucky enough to observe it or not. Travel gives such jolts. I could live in this town, so how is it that I've never been here before today?
morning memories home
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.
moving choices identity
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.
smell matter instinct
Whatever a guidebook says, wether or not you leave somewhere with a sense of the place is entirely a matter of smell and instinct.