Maeve Binchy Quotes

Benny explained that it wasn't her sweater. It was borrowed from a fellow. She wondered why she needed to tell so much to strangers.

Women who start out as ugly ducklings don't become beautiful swans. What they mainly become is confident ducks. They take charge of their lives.

Because I saw my parents relaxing in armchairs and reading and liking it, I thought it was a peaceful grown-up thing to do, and I still think that.

I don't think we should spend any time wandering around that remote possibility. It's nice of you to wish me well, but actually I find it unbearably patronizing.

When I was younger, I avoided exercise or anything strenuous. I didn't even enjoy walking. As I got older, I spent so much time marking books or sitting at a desk writing that there was no room for exercise - not that I would have bothered anyway.

On the first day of school, my father told me I'd be the most popular girl and everyone would love me and want to be my friend. It wasn't so, but it gave me an enormous amount of confidence.

2. Men like women without make-up. They don't. They like extremely well and carefully made-up women whose skin has that expensive cultured look which comes from three hours at the dressing table. A woman who is really without make-up would frighten them to death. They regard blotches as eczema, and uneven colouring as a sign of tertiary syphilis.

The biggest influence on my books was the fact that I had worked in a newspaper for so long. In a daily paper, you learn to write very quickly; there is no time to sit and brood about what you are going to say.

If you don't go to a dance, you can never be rejected, but you'll never get to dance, either.

In my stories, whenever there's somebody wonderful and charming and bright and intelligent, that's me!

I was lucky enough to be fairly quick at understanding what was taught, but unlucky enough not to be really interested in it, so I always got my exams but never had the scholar's love of learning for its own sake.

Everybody is a hero in their own story if you just look.

I thought it must be desperate to be old. To wake up in the morning and remember that you were ancient - and so behave that way. I thought old people were full of aches and pains and horrible illnesses.

As a memorial, I'd like a statue. Not of me, but a little modern statue, in marble or bronze, maybe of a bird, in a park where children could play and people going by could see it. On it, I'd just like it to say: 'Maeve Binchy, storyteller' and people could look at the name and remember that they'd seen it somewhere else.

Listen to me, Ria. It will be different when you and I have a home. It will be a real home, one that people will want to come running back to.

And he said nothing. Just put his arms around her more closely as the whole heart clinic and their friends and relations danced to the music of "Hey Jude".

I have an irregular heartbeat, so that means a fair amount of medication - and I have blood pressure pills, too, but no vitamins or supplements.

I do try to live every day as if it were my last, and it has worked for me so far.

We asked our friends and relations to lend us their children, and, because we lived in London, children loved to come and stay for their half-term holidays.

bowls of cornflakes,

I once got a huge, expensive flower arrangement from a person I didn't like, who sent it out of pure guilt. It had a hideous bird-of-paradise in the middle, and I thought it would never fade and die. I hated it.

The most important thing to realise is that everyone is capable of telling a story. It doesn't matter where we were born or how we grew up.

I have been blessed with friends who do things rather than buy things: friends who will change books at the library, take a bag of your old clothes to a thrift store, bring you cuttings and plant them in a window box, fill the bird feeder in your garden when you can't get out.

The situation. First time in the country and she had found St. Jarlath's Crescent with no difficulty. "You must be Noel. I hope I'm not too early for the household." "No, we were all up. We're about to go to work, you see, and you are very welcome, by the way." "Thank you. Well, shall I come in and say hello and good-bye to them?" Noel realized that he might have left her forever on the doorstep, but then he was only half awake. It took him until about eleven a.m., when he had his first vodka and Coke, to be fully in control of the day. Noel was absolutely certain that nobody at Hall's knew of his morning injection of alcohol and

I do realize that I am a popular writer who people buy to take on vacation. I'm an escapist kind of writer.

To heal would be to open the wound,examine it and forgive

No point in destroying Wednesday thinking about Friday. This one-day-at-a-time thing really worked. Friday

Nobody ever wins by the cavalry coming to rescue you. It isn't a question of you're happy if you get married, or you get thin, or you get rich, because I've known lots of thin, rich, married people who are absolutely miserable.

I am not a member of Fat Liberation, nor do I think that obesity is healthy. But I do believe that in many ways my life has been a more charmed and happy one because I was always large.

I'm an escapist kind of writer.

If I had my life to live all over again, I really think I would have been a fit person. Looking around me, I realise that the men and women who walked and ran and swam and played sport look better and feel better than the rest of us.

I'm getting better, happier, and nicer as I grow older, so I would be terrific in a couple of hundred years time.

He thought about how life never turns out like you think and hope it will.

She soon called a halt to the work. Judy's great success was that she stopped her helpers before they got tired.

I've been very lucky and I have a happy old age with good family and friends still around.

I was very pleased, obviously, to have outsold great writers. But I'm not insane - I do realise that I am a popular writer who people buy to take on vacation.

But an intelligent man like you would know that to live in an unrealistic hope is a very foolish way to spend a life. - Lena Gray

No, that can't be so.' 'Believe me, it is. All kinds of things you told them like sunsets are good and killing small birds is bad.' 'Oh please, may I have said something less banal. Please!

Wasn't it hard that you did so much for children and loved them so deeply and they seemed so indifferent to you in return?

It's a funny old world. Once you realize that, you're halfway there.

Never mind money; the gifts of time and skill call into being the richest marketplace in the world.

We're nothing if we're not loved. When you meet somebody who is more important to you than yourself, that has to be the most important thing in life, really. And I think we are all striving for it in different ways. I also believe very, very strongly that everybody is the hero/heroine of his/her own life. I try to make my characters kind of ordinary, somebody that anybody could be. Because we've all had loves, perhaps love and loss, people can relate to my characters

I am a big, confident, happy woman who had a loving childhood, a pleasant career, and a wonderful marriage. I feel very lucky.

We are all the heroes and heroines of our own lives. Our love stories are amazingly romantic; our losses and betrayals and disappointments are gigantic in our own minds.

I never wanted to write. I just wrote letters home from a kibbutz in Israel to reassure my parents that I was still alive and well fed and having a great time. They thought these letters were brilliant and sent them to a newspaper. So I became a writer by accident.

I didn't have a sweet tooth, but I liked butter, and I liked sauces, and I liked wine ... and curry ... and cheeses.

I was just lucky I lived in this time of mass-market paperbacks.

I had a very happy childhood, which is unsuitable if you're going to be an Irish writer.

Who knows what light housework means? One nun's light could be another nun's penal servitude.

Of course I wanted children. Bright, gorgeous, loving children. I could almost see them.

I was the big, bossy older sister, full of enthusiasms, mad fantasies, desperate urges to be famous, and anxious to be a saint - a settled sort of saint, not one who might have to suffer or die for her faith.

That Dr. Morrissey had always said that we found excuses to put off doing something that would take our minds off our worries. It was as if we didn't want to lose the luxury of worrying.

He had not known it was possible to love a little human being as he loved Annie.

I don't say I was 'proceeding down a thoroughfare;' I say I 'walked down the road'. I don't say I 'passed a hallowed institute of learning;' I say I 'passed a school'.

She said that it was dangerous to try to know somebody too well. People should have their own reserves, she said, the places they went in their minds, where no one else should follow.

Her life was like her house - a colorful fantasy where anything was possible if you wanted it badly enough.

The whole art of life is knowing the right time to say things.

I didn't get excited by weight loss, and since I was already happy being fat, I couldn't see the point of it all. I'm 6 ft. and weigh about 18 st. or 19 st., but weighing myself is not something I do with much pleasure.

We have to make our own happiness, and we have to make our own decisions and play the hand that is dealt to us.

Always she had sounded sympathetic, always she had appeared to understand. But inside there was a bit of her that said that they couldn't have tried hard enough. If Celia had a daughter who was desperately unhappy at school and who had lost four stone in weight, she wouldn't hang around
she'd try to cope with it. If she had a father who couldn't cope she'd have him to live with her. Only now was she beginning to realize that it was not to be so simple. People had minds of their own. And her mother's mind was like a hermetically sealed box in a vault of a bank.

Any one could write a book," said the taxi driver. " Yes, they could, but they DON'T," said Maeve Binchy

I'll understand if you don't want me. But I will be heartbroken. You are all I ever dreamed of and hoped for. You are much, much more. Please know that I didn't think I was mean-minded. But I realize I am. I don't want you to put your arms around me and say it's all right, that you forgive me. I want you to be sure that you do, and my love for you will last as long as I live. I can see no lightness, no humour, no joke to make. I just hope that we will be able to go back to when we had laughter, and the world was coloured, not black and white and grey. I am so sorry for hurting you. I could inflict all kinds of pain on myself, but it would not take back any I gave to you. - David Power

Eve showed Aidan how to rake the range. "I think when we're married we might have something more modern," he grumbled. "No, surely with the eight children we can have them stoking it, going up the chimney even.

I discovered that men were just like everyone else, really. They liked you if you were good-tempered and easy to talk to. And being a big girl meant other females trusted you more and confided in you.

In Ireland every place you visit and every person you meet has a story. And they love to tell you their stories. Everyone is interested in everything; in a land of storytellers, you will never be bored.

I once tried to write a novel about revenge. It's the only book I didn't finish. I couldn't get into the mind of the person who was plotting vengeance.

The day she realized that there were many ways to go, and Mother's was only one way. Not necessarily the right way, and not at all the wrong way. Just one of the many ways ahead.

I used to dream of some kind of way that you could carry a phone with you - but I never thought I would see it in my lifetime. It doesn't matter nowadays if you are caught in traffic or got lost on the way somewhere. You can just send a text and the recipient will know that you haven't fallen under a bus.

When I was teaching Latin in girls' schools before I became a writer, I didn't much like it if parents would come in and say, 'We'll have less of the Ovid and Virgil and more of the grammar, please.' After all, I was the one in charge. That's how I feel about doctors. You should trust them to do their job properly.

he must not know how much power he had to move her.

My brother married young, and his is the best marriage I know.

I believed that old people never laughed. I thought they sighed a lot and groaned. They walked with sticks, and they didn't like children on bicycles or roller skates ... or with big dogs.

Nobody is ordinary if you know where to look.

Always write as if you are talking to someone. It works. Don't put on any fancy phrases or accents or things you wouldn't say in real life.

home early, Liam?

Money doesn't make you happy, but it gives a zone of comfort around you.

I have great family and good friends; the stories I told became popular, and people all over the world bought them.

Happiness is in our own hearts. I have no regrets of anything in the past. I'm totally cheerful and happy, and I think that a lot of your attitude is not in the circumstances you find yourself in, but in the circumstances you make for yourself.

God, Benny, don't blow your nose like that in the church. You'd lift half the congregation out of their seats," Patsy warned.

After my hip operation, I had to cut out butter, which I loved, and salt. I no longer eat desserts with lots of cream, and I've cut right back on alcohol.

When I was being brought up, we weren't allowed to wallow in self-pity, which was a thoroughly good thing. We were all fine and healthy because that was what we were told to be.

Stop thinking like Alice in Wonderland, Celia told herself sternly. You're a grown-up, it's no use shutting your eyes, wishing things would happen

My mother hoped I would meet a nice doctor or barrister or accountant who would marry me and take me to live in what is now called Fashionable Dublin Four. But she felt that this was a vain hope. I was a bit loud to make a nice professional wife, and anyway, I was too keen on spending my holidays in far flung places to meet any of these people.

Growing up in Ireland, there never seemed to be the notion that children should be seen and not heard. We all looked forward to mealtimes when we'd sit around the table and talk about our days. Storytelling and long, rambling conversations were considered good things.

I look placid, you see, that's why people think I'm fine. Inside I worry a lot.

It was so silly to try to define things by words. What did one person mean by infatuation or obsession and another mean by love. The whole thing couldn't be tidied away with neat little labels. - Lena Gray

An English journalist called Michael Viney told me when I was 25, that I would write well if I cared a lot what I was writing about. That worked. I went home that day and wrote about parents not understanding their children as well as we teachers did, and it was published the very next week.

The rage she felt was a real thing, you could almost take it out of her and see it, like a red mist.

Of course, I should have done what doctors said and walked for miles every day and not eaten great amounts of butter. But then, life is life, and if we all did what they said we should do, it would be a different world.

I'm a great will maker. I've made my will every year since I was 21.

I don't think you're happier if you're thin or beautiful or rich or married. You have to make your own happiness. My heroines do not become beautiful elegant swans, they become confident ducks and get on with life.

If I see Marian Keyes' books or Patricia Scanlan's books given more prominence than mine in the bookstore, I'll move mine to the front. I've told them I do this, and they've confessed to doing the same thing to me.

I realized that you didn't have to make self-deprecating remarks or turn yourself into the butt of some unspoken joke. I also discovered that being big didn't deter possible suitors.

There are no makeovers in my books. The ugly duckling does not become a beautiful swan. She becomes a confident duck able to take charge of her own life and problems.

You can't lay down laws for what people think and hope.

I think you've got to play the hand that you're dealt and stop wishing for another hand.

I have been luckier than anyone I know or even heard of. I had a very happy childhood, a good education, I enjoyed working as a teacher, journalist and author. I have loved a wonderful man for over 33 years, and I believe he loves me, too.

I'm mainly an airport author, and if you're trying to take your mind off the journey, you're not going to read 'King Lear.'

I've seen a lot of people buy my books and then fall asleep on the plane soon afterwards.

Do you know the land where the lemon-trees blossom;where the golden oranges glow in the dark foliage'.