Quotes from Peter Mayle

There is nothing like a comfortable adventure to put people in a good humor. . .

There are plenty of miserable millionaires all over the place.

I was lucky enough to spend some of my school days in Barbados, where my father was working, and this gave me a taste for hot weather.

When I was very young in London, I had a bank account, which didn't have a great deal in it. I should think at least every three months the bank manager would call me up and threaten to strangle me because I had no money, and I was writing checks.

I have a robust sense of humour which helps me deal with problems.

In the south of France the phones cut in and out, the electricity isn't particularly reliable. I think many people would get very irritated with that life.

No matter what their background, the southern French are fascinated by food.

One must never forget that life is unfair. But sometimes, with a bit of luck, this works in your favour.

Nowadays, if you have a journey, albeit a simple one, you consider yourself lucky if nothing happens.

I would dearly love to resist the temptation, if you can call it that, to worry. It's boring, it's anti-social, it's unproductive and it's depressing.

You don't like it when a French housewife gets mad at you. If she gets steam behind her, she is an unstoppable creature.

There is nothing I like better at the end of a hot summer's day than taking a short walk around the garden. You can smell the heat coming up from the earth to meet the cooler night air.

I left school at 16 and skipped university to work, initially as a waiter. I think I missed out on what would have been great years.

I have a very set routine. I work six days a week, but only half days. I work from 9 in the morning till 1 in the afternoon, without any interruptions, a fair slug.

The kitchen garden satisfies both requirements, a thing 0f beauty and a joy for dinner.

The people of Provence greeted spring with uncharacteristic briskness, as if nature had given everyone an injection of sap.

It was exciting at first... Then it became routine. I guess everything does, even if it's dangerous.

What a marvelous sunset,' she said. 'Yes,' replied her husband. 'Most impressive for such a small village.

La Closerie, in Ansouis.

If I live to be sixteen, I shall never fully understand the rich complexities of human nature. Not sure that I want to, either. It would be a lifetime's work, and brooding over the mysteries of existence is bad for your health. Look what happens to philosophers. Most of them end up barking mad, taking to the bottle, or becoming professors of existentialism at obscure universities.

Out here in the country there was no avoiding the direct link between death and dinner

Memory is at its best when it's selective, when we have edited out the dull, the disappointing, and the disagreeable until we are left with rose-colored perfection. This is often quite inaccurate but usually very comforting. It can also be fascinating to revisit. Was it really like that? Were we really like that?

There were far too many at my birthday party, and I wouldn't have invited any of them. I couldn't see them at first, because it takes a few days for the eyes to open, but they made their presence felt. Try having breakfast with a football team, all of them fighting to get hold of the same piece of toast, and you'll know what I went through.

We might treat a rabbit as a pet or become emotionally attached to a goose, but we had come from cities and supermarkets, where flesh was hygienically distanced from any resemblance to living creatures. A shrink-wrapped pork chop has a sanitized, abstract appearance that has nothing whatever to do with the warm, mucky bulk of a pig. Out here in the country there was no avoiding the direct link between death and dinner.