Chinon

"What Family doesn't have its ups and downs." 

(Eleanor of Aquitaine-The Lion in Winter. James Goldman)

"It is my feeling that time ripens all things; with time all things are revealed; time is the father of truth."

(Francoise Rabelais)

Villandry

"After I'd drawn the grasses, I started seeing. Whereas if you'd just photographed them, you wouldn't be looking as intently as you do when you are drawing, so it wouldn't affect you so much."

(Martin Gayford/David Hockney)

" Drawing is the art of being able to leave an accurate record of the experience of what one isn't, of what one doesn't know."

(Brett Whiteley)

Giverny

"My life has been nothing but a faliure."

(Claude Monet)

"Monets garden must be included with his works, because he combined the magic of an adaptation of nature with the work of a painter of light."

(George Clemenceau)

Vernon and Giverny

"France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older. Intelligence and good manners."

(F Scott Fitzgerald)

"If there were no frenchwomen, life wouldn't be worth living."

(Friedrich Engels)