Quotes from Frances Mayes

outrageous flowers swagging off balconies like bright skirts of ballgowns...

Oh, come on, he was twenty-six. And he had poetry on his lips.

Instead of winding and skirting, Roman roads tend to go straight to the top. The chariots were light and the shortest distance between two points seemed to have governed their surveyors. I've read that some of their roadbeds go down twelve feet.

Even gelato, which used to be divine all over Italy, is not dependably good anymore.

We feel prepared to face the reality of restoration. We walk into town for coffee and telephone Piero Rizzatti, the geometra. The translations "draftsman" or "surveyor" don't quite explain what a geometra is, a professional without an equivalent in the United States—a liaison among owner, builders, and town planning officials. Ian has assured us that he is the best in the area, meaning also that he has the best connections and can get the permits quickly.

One habit: choosing a book and starting each day with a dedicated time of reading and gazing, becoming an apprentice to a mind I admire.

He's already tan, and leaning on the rail in his yellow linen shirt, with the pure glory of Venice racing behind him, I think he looks like someone I'd like to run off with, if I already hadn't.

Send me out into another life lord because this one is growing faint I do not think it goes all the way.

When books go out into the world, they take on a life. Sometimes that life is a quiet and dusty one, waiting on the nether regions of library stacks. I have books of poetry like that. With others, the book's life is one of surprise because the book keeps on making its way, on it's own, into intriguing and larger spaces.

Don't plant any Peace roses," a friend and connoisseur of roses advised. "They're such a cliché." But not only are they dazzling, the vanilla cream, peach, and rosy blush colors repeat the colors of the house.

It's daunting to find the language so foreign, so distant, but also so thrilling. One is absolved of responsibility when the language is incomprehensible.

He's delighted to read what the mayor of Naples says about driving there. Naples is the most chaotic city for drivers on earth. Ed loved it—he got to drive on the sidewalk while the pedestrians filled the street. "A green light is a green light, avanti, avanti," the mayor explained. "A red light—just a suggestion." And yellow? he was asked. "Yellow is for gaiety.

Often, seemingly spontaneous acts come from a deep, unacknowledged place, and a sudden decision feels inevitable and right.

I'm mixed on figs. The fleshy quality feels spooky. In Italian, il fico, fig, has a slangy turn into la fica, meaning vulva. Possibly because of the famous fig leaf exodus from Eden, it seems like the most ancient of fruits. Oddest, too—the fig flower is inside the fruit. To pull one open is to look into a complex, primitive, infinitely sophisticated life cycle tableau.

What is life but this? Choices made early in a relationship determine the course.

As they clean the walls with wet cloths and sponges, they uncover the earlier paints, most prevalent a stark blue that must have been inspired by Mary's blue robes. Renaissance painters could get that rare color only from ground lapis lazuli brought from quarries in what is now Afghanistan.

Look if you like but you will have to leap. Yes, I've always known that; I just didn't know that I knew.

What if you did not feel uncertainty, the white writing says. Are you exempt from doubt? Why not rename it excitement?

As Garibaldi says,] 'Sleep, my dear Chevalley, sleep, that is what Sicilians want, and they will always hate anyone who tries to wake them...

Vicki shines with intelligence as brightly as with beauty, a clear open face, black eyes, and a smile that makes you see what she looked like as a nine-year-old.

Writing a poem doubles, triples the experience or connection that initiated it.

No one can teach anyone to be a great anything. If your blood is on fire with the love of language and the desire to make something with words, you probably know that.

Travel is a privilege because it gives you the world you were not given. It allows you to be extant in other versions.

I'm reading more than ever. I've started on the left wall of the Carnegie Library and plan to read my way around the room.