Best Quotes from Year In Provence by Peter Mayle with Page Numbers

"One is fortunate to be in Provence."

"We had talked about it during the long gray winters and the damp green summers, looked with an addict's longing at photographs of village markets and vineyards, dreamed of being woken up by the sun slanting through the bedroom window."

"Everything about it was solid."

"There is a season for everything in Provence."

"He needn't have worried. We loved the vines—they were meant to be here."

"The effect of the weather on the inhabitants of Provence is immediate and obvious."

"In the country, separated from the next house though you may be by hundreds of yards, your neighbors are part of your life, and you are part of theirs."

"The cold-weather cuisine of Provence is peasant food. It is made to stick to your ribs, keep you warm, give you strength, and send you off to bed with a full belly."

"We watched with something close to panic as plates were wiped yet again and a huge, steaming casserole was placed on the table."

"I thanked him. 'C'est normal,' he said, and stumped off down the hill to his million-franc residence."

This traditional mixture was put aside, one morning in early February, for a lead story which had nothing to do with sport, crime, or politics: PROVENCE UNDER BLANKET OF SNOW!

We had the Lubéron to ourselves, eerie and beautiful, mile after mile of white icing marked only by occasional squirrel and rabbit tracks crossing the footpaths in straight and purposeful lines.

The novelty of being marooned in the middle of a picturesque sea was, during the day, a great pleasure.

But at night, even with fires and sweaters and yet more food, the chill came up from the stone floors and out of the stone walls, making the toes numb and the muscles tight with cold.

The dogs adapted to the snow like young bears, plunging into the drifts to emerge with white whiskers and bucking their way across the fields in huge, frothy leaps.

It was time to stop pretending we were in a subtropical climate and give in to the temptations of central heating.

The Mistral gusted through the courtyard and obliterated the shape in the snow, but by then we had decided: the table would be square and the top a single slab of stone.

Deep winter in Provence has a curiously unreal atmosphere, the combination of silence and emptiness creating the feeling that you are separated from the rest of the world, detached from normal life.

You must wait until it has thawed. There was some desultory talk about blowtorches and crowbars, but Menicucci put a stop to that, dismissing it as patati-patata, which I took to mean nonsense.

The old man had emerged from the kitchen and was peering at us, screwing up his eyes against the light coming through the door.

The almond tree was in tentative blossom.

There was a feeling of activity and purpose in the air.

Have a pastis and relax.

In Provence, time is a very elastic commodity.

The fact that it happened at all would be enough.

It all evens out in the end.

You cannot reason with a pig on the brink of gastronomic ecstasy.

To make it through the season of life, we must be prepared to be patient.

To enjoy nature is to embrace the simple joys of existence.

Every day brings fresh evidence of growth and greenery.

"Buying a house in Provence is not without its complications."

"Most of this is because the French government takes a cut of about 8 percent on all transactions."

"All the interested parties—the buyer, the seller, and the property agent—are gathered in the notaire's office, and the act of sale is read aloud, line by interminable line."

"There is always something unexpected, and a buyer needs patience and a sense of humor to see the business through."

"Don't need an architect," he said, "I know exactly what I want."

"I think I've found a place."

"Money is an international language and he didn't anticipate having any difficulties."

"The approach of summer had obviously been on Massot's mind as well."

"The tourists explored the narrow streets, looking curiously into people's houses and posing for photographs in front of the church."

"One way or another, there's never a dull moment."

This was more exhilarating than walking, quieter and healthier than driving, not too taxing, and altogether delightful.

Why hadn't we done it before? Why didn't we do it every day?

Courage, c'est pas loin. Allez!

Eight hours of this and you sleep like a baby.

We realized we were becoming as obsessive about food as the French.

The quality of the food is more important than convenience.

He had taught himself to cook, but he had no desire to become the Bocuse of Buoux.

It’s good here. I have everything I want.

The combination of food and Sunday has a calming influence on the French motorist.

Life is to be enjoyed.

"It astonishes me that you didn't fall off."

"A measure of alcohol enriches the corpuscles."

"People who would normally pass one another on the street without acknowledgment were suddenly friendly, in the way that often happens when strangers are united in their performance of a good deed."

"Eat up! Drink up! Replace those corpuscles! The stomach must be served!"

"The street be as wide as the height of the houses."

"Only snobs kiss once, I was told, or those unfortunates who suffer from congenital froideur."

"It is often possible to follow the gist of a Provençal conversation from a distance, without hearing the words, just by watching expressions and the movements of bodies and hands."

"The wearing of socks was a distant memory. My watch stayed in a drawer... I was turning into a contented vegetable."

"The sun was a great tranquilizer, and time passed in a haze of well-being; long, slow, almost torpid days when it was so enjoyable to be alive that nothing else mattered."

"In another place, in less perfect weather, it would have been depressing, but not here."

"It used to be beautiful, and rare and expensive pockets of it still are."

"...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..."

"You see this? Those salauds. They come like thieves in the night and leave early in the morning."

"Selfishly, I was glad they wanted to spend their holidays there rather than in the open spaces of the Lubéron..."

"...to be sure of a parking spot for dinner in Saint-Tropez it was best to be there by 7:30 in the morning..."

"It was a time when the true aces could drop a boule on your toe from twenty feet away..."

"The countryside stunned and deserted. It was an afternoon for the pool and the hammock and an undemanding book..."

"She looked down at her hands, which were well kept and surprisingly young-looking. 'So I chose the kitchen..."

"In the evening, the candlelight flickering on red wine and brown faces."

"To add to the problem, some establishments install an energy-saving device which is peculiar to the French..."

"Who would be a fish?"

"Forty years as a plumber have taught me that you cannot hurry central heating. It is trčs, trčs délicat."

"Elles viennent, les chčvres!"

"It's a matter of their crottins," he said. "The goats who make the most droppings before the race are likely to do well."

"It is minus ten degrees. All of a sudden, the pipes start to leak!"

"It's madness," he said, "but people like le tout Paris—they want to be with their friends in August."

"It was enough just to be alone and to be quiet."

"It reached Ménerbes in the dark and early hours of the morning, waking us with a clap that shook the windows."

"What a marvelous sunset, most impressive for such a small village."

"August is bizarre."

The days were dry and hot, the nights cool, the air wonderfully clear after the muggy haze of August.

You can do everything right for eleven months a year, and then—pouf—a storm comes and the crop is hardly fit for grape juice.

There is always at least one fly in their ointment, and they take a perverse pleasure in their pessimism.

It's too good; it won't last.

One can make all kinds of expansive decisions in two hours.

If the dog was in the forest, one simply left something with the scent of the kennel on it—a cushion or, more likely, a scrap of sacking.

Every evening now, the roads were busy with vans and tractors towing their purple mountains to the wine cooperative.

It sounded like a good year to us.

At least it didn't rain.

Faustin pushed back his hat and I could see the line sharp across his forehead where the burned brown skin turned white.

"For a moment, I thought I was being attacked."

"Some can kill you," he said.

"You must know the deadly species. There are two or three. If you're not sure, take them to the pharmacy."

"Living in France had turned us into bakery addicts... it was like discovering a new food."

"Nature is wearing her prettiest clothes."

"A lifetime of hard work should be rewarded. A man should spend his old age in comfort, not breaking his back on the land."

"Better sticky than burned to a cinder."

"Voilŕ, jeune homme, ants cannot support the juice of fresh lemons. That is something you have learned today."

"It was a true family effort, and by the end of the afternoon we had a pristine ribbon of crushed, putty-colored gravel worthy of being entered for the Concours d'Élégance sponsored by Bulldozer Magazine."

"I had never employed a millionaire before. I don't have much time for them as a rule, but this one put in a good long day."

The French peasant is an inventive man, and he hates waste.

He is reluctant to discard anything, because he knows that one day the bald tractor tire, the chipped scythe, the broken hoe, and the transmission salvaged from the 1949 Renault van will serve him well.

It was, in its primitive way, a model of efficiency.

Nice and clean, eh? I like to see them nice and clean.

People buy them? C'est curieux.

Any friend of the grape was a friend of ours.

It was another happy discovery to add to our list.

An extraordinary thing had happened: a horse, a big dark horse, had come running up the track and had gone into one of the outbuildings.

At the inquest, someone had a sense of humor. The cause of death was recorded as suicide while the balance of the mind was disturbed by a horse.

You'll be burning wood night and day, and that's when chimneys catch fire.

"I have brought you the official post office calendar... It shows all the saints' days..."

"It's free," he said. "Or you can buy it if you want to."

"What we should do was to invite the builders to a party to celebrate the end of the job."

"The wives... would be so curious that they would find the invitation irresistible."

"This would cause loss of face among the other wives and public embarrassment..."

"It was an inspiration. We fixed a date for the last Sunday before Christmas..."

"It felt strange to be coming to the end of the year under blue skies..."

"The main event of Christmas was food... After a morning spent looking at it all we were suffering from visual indigestion."

"There would be visits of inspection, drinks, heated arguments... We were learning to think in seasons instead of days or weeks."

"It had been a self-absorbed year... fascinating to us in its daily detail, sometimes frustrating, often uncomfortable, but never dull or disappointing. And, above all, we felt at home."