Peter Mayle Quotes

Sundays In France Have A Different Atmosphere To Other Days, With Fewer Phone Calls, No Postman, No Delivery Men And No One Banging On The Door.

Very Little Happens In My Books.

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.

The Great Thing About Having Money Is That You Can Actually Just Get On With Your Life And Not Have To Think About Paying The Bills Or Crouch Over The Wall Street Journal Or The Financial Times And Look At The Stock Figures And Things Like That. That Bores Me Rigid.

Day After Day We Looked For Rain, And Day After Day We Saw Nothing But The Sun. Lavender That We Had Planted In The Spring Died. The Patch Of Grass In Front Of The House Abandoned Its Ambitions To Become A Lawn And Turned Into The Dirty Yellow Of Poor Straw. The Earth Shrank, Revealing Its Knuckles And Bones, Rocks And Roots That Had Been Invisible Before.

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 Funny Thing In France Is That Writers Are Not Allowed To Retire, Because The French Government Say You Are Still Earning Money From Books You Wrote 20 Years Ago.

Next To The Defeated Politician, The Writer Is The Most Vocal And Inventive Griper On Earth. He Sees Hardship And Unfairness Wherever He Looks. His Agent Doesn’t Love Him (enough). The Blank Sheet Of Paper Is An Enemy. The Publisher Is A Cheapskate. The Critic Is A Philistine. The Public Doesn’t Understand Him. His Wife Doesn’t Understand Him. The Bartender Doesn’t Understand Him.

I'd Rather Live Precariously In My Own Office Than Comfortably In Somebody Else's.

Prescription For Writer’s Block: Fear Of Poverty.

Sunglasses Must Be Kept On Until An Acquaintance Is Identified At One Of The Tables, But One Must Not Appear To Be Looking For Company. Instead, The Impression Should Be That One Is Heading Into The Cafe To Make A Phone Call To One's Titled Italian Admirer, When--quelle Surprise!--one Sees A Friend. The Sunglasses Can Then Be Removed And The Hair Tossed While One Is Persuaded To Sit Down.

Nowadays, If You Have A Journey, Albeit A Simple One, You Consider Yourself Lucky If Nothing Happens.