Frances Mayes Quotes

For me, my travels have been the chance to go to a place that already exists in my imagination.

When you're in a place, the details you focus on are different than details you focus on when you're writing about it.

I never keep a scorecard or the batting averages. I hate statistics. What I got to know, I keep in my head.

My life's experiences, I've always had, my uncle used to call it antenna. I know what's going to happen oftentimes before it happened when it's involving me.

Observation is an old man's memory.

But reason has no power against feeling, and feeling older than history is no light matter.

I feel like I've dreamed half of my life that hasn't happened yet, so a lot of times I'm going along, and I do stuff, and I know that I've done it. I have deja vus more than I have regular experiences. If half of your day is a deja vu, then you start to wonder, 'What is real and what isn't?'

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.

A nose that can see is worth two that sniff.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

You're surprised by something, but you don't really know what surprised you; you recognize someone, but you don't really know what cues cause you to recognize that person.

I don't believe that you have to be a cow to know what milk is.

You can't really say what is beautiful about a place, but the image of the place will remain vividly with you.

It can't be Nature, for it is not sense.

Man is a recording animal.

Because of Iowa, I like being in a different state that doesn't even have grass and think that I smell fresh-cut grass. It brings me home.

I go with what I know and what I see, and I believe in reality.

I have an incredible compass. You can put me back in a country I haven't been in 20 years and say, 'Get me from point A to point B,' and I'll take you there.

I definitely associate songs with the places that I've been.

For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have spoken only of Irene.

Taste is a matter of ignorance. If you know what you are tasting, you don't have to taste.

Do you remember Italy?

Instinct is the gift of experience. The first question you have to ask yourself is, 'On what basis am I making a judgment?' ... If you have no experience, then your instincts aren't any good.

A woman can smell mink through six inches of lead.

You don't have to lay an egg to know if it tastes good.