Quotes from Peter Mayle

considerable

is at a time like this, when crisis threatens the stomach, that the French display the most sympathetic side of their nature. Tell them stories of physical injury or financial ruin and they will either laugh or commiserate politely. But tell them you are facing gastronomic hardship, and they will move heaven and earth and even restaurant tables to help you.

because the truffiste is not anxious to participate in the crackpot government scheme the rest of us call income tax.

The heat outside was like a blow on the skull and the road back to the house was a long mirage, liquid and rippling in the glare, the leaves on the vines drooping, the farm dogs silent, the countryside stunned and deserted.

We told ourselves that we would assume that nothing would be done when we expected it to be done; the fact that it happened at all would be enough.

Sunday has a calming influence on the French motorist.... Tomorrow he will take up the mantle of the kamikaze pilot once again, but today it is Sunday in Provence, and life it to be enjoyed.

It was generally agreed that they were a funny bunch, these natives of August.

THERE COMES a time in the restoration of an old house when the desire to see it finished threatens all those noble aesthetic intentions to see it finished properly.

Dar, bineînÈ›eles, spusese el, se È™tie c? englezii îÈ™i omoar? mieii de dou? ori: o dat? când îi taie È™i a doua oar? când îi g?tesc.

roast lamb from Sisteron, "the best lamb in France

As an appetizer, we would consult the oracular books, and came to depend more and more on the Gault-Millau guide. The Michelin is invaluable, and nobody should travel through France without it, but it is confined to the bare bones of prices and grades and specialities. Gault-Millau gives you the flesh as well. It will tell you about the chef—if he's young, where he was trained; if he's established, whether he's resting on his past success or still trying hard.

It is not infallible, and it is certainly not entirely free from prejudice, but it is amusing and always interesting and, because it is written in colloquial French, good homework for novices in the language like us.

Remove the dough from the mixing bowl onto the counter and gather it up in your hands in a rough ball. The dough should feel soft. Bring the full length of your thumbs into the center of the ball so that they meet, and stretch the dough from the center out, as if opening a book, into an oblong shape. Turn the dough a quarter turn and stretch it again the same way, creating a smooth ball. Transfer the dough to a

Everything," he said. "My wife cooks everything well." He dealt the menus out and left us to greet another couple, and we dithered enjoyably between lamb stuffed with herbs, daube, veal with truffles, and an unexplained dish called the fantaisie du chef. The old man came back and sat down, listened to the order, and nodded. "It's always the same," he said. "It's the men who like the fantaisie.

I asked for a half bottle of white wine to go with the first course, and some red to follow. "No," he said, "you're wrong." He told us what to drink, and it was a red Côtes du Rhône from Visan. Good wine and good women came from Visan, he said. He got up and fetched a bottle from a vast dark cupboard. "There. You'll like that." (Later, we noticed that everybody had the same wine on their table.)

Shop early for the best, we had often been told, and wait until just before the market closes for the cheapest.

steal anything.

Gu himself presides over the room- a genial, noisy man with the widest, jauntiest, must luxuriant and ambitious mustache I have ever seen, permanently fighting gravity and the razor in its attempts to make contact with Gu's eyebrows.

Half-familiar sounds could be dimly recognized as words through the swirls and eddies of Provençal: demain became demang, vin became vang, maison became mesong.

Now there was silence. For hours on end the valley would be completely still and empty, and we became curious. What was everybody doing? Faustin, we knew, traveled around the neighboring farms as a visiting slaughterer, slitting the throats and breaking the necks of rabbits and ducks and pigs and geese so that they could be turned into terrines and hams and confits.

Well now," said Sam, "you have to remember that in the States, a house is not a home without a gun. So I guess we'd shoot him. That usually works.

although I seldom knew what the date was. It didn't seem important. I was turning into a contented vegetable, maintaining sporadic contact with real life through telephone conversations with people in faraway offices.

A tray of drinks was brought out, with pastis for the men and chilled, sweet muscat wine for the women, and we were caught in a crossfire of noisy complaints about the weather. Was it as bad as this in England? Only in the summer, I said.

Memory is a notoriously biased and sentimental editor, selecting what it wants to keep and invariably making a few cosmetic changes to past events. With rose-colored hindsight, the good times become magical; the bad times fade and eventually disappear, leaving only a seductive blur of sunlit days and the laughter of friends. Was it really like that? Would it be like that again?