Marian Keyes Quotes

Rough as a badger's arse ~ Marian Keyes

In the same way that the stewards on the Titanic were more concerned about the unemptied ashtrays on the bar than the enormous hole in the side of the ship which was letting in zillions of gallons of water, I too was worrying about the unimportant and ignoring the vital. Sometimes it's easier that way. Because although there was little I could do about the huge hole, it was within my power to empty an asthray. ~ Marian Keyes

Many nations use language simply to convey information, but it's different in Ireland. With most conversational exchanges you get an 'added extra' like the free little biscuit you sometimes get with a cappuccino in a fancy coffee place. ~ Marian Keyes

Having to be nice to people, which, as everyone knows, is the toughest job in the world ~ Marian Keyes

That's the thing with relationships, I understood: it doesn't mean we don't hurt one another; how can we help it sometimes, we're only human. But if you love someone, you get hurt and you manage to forgive. And be forgiven. ~ Marian Keyes

I wished there was some kind of switch on my brain. That I could turn it off in the same way that I could turn off the television. Just click it off and immediately empty my mind of all these images and worrying thoughts. And simply leave a blank screen. Or if I could just remove my head and put it on the bedside table and forget about it until morning. And then attach it again when I needed it. ~ Marian Keyes

Here's how it is: I feel guilty about every single bite of food that goes into my mouth. ~ Marian Keyes

I have a habit of taking instant dislikes to people. Simply because it saves time. ~ Marian Keyes

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. ~ Maeve Binchy

Get over it, and if you can't get over it, get over talking about it. ~ Marian Keyes

Smarter than me. But here's the thing my life did get better. I made a decision to let go of my dreams, because they were killing me, and I stopped asking the impossible of myself. I changed my attitude and decided to focus on what I had rather than what i didn't have. ~ Marian Keyes

My mother is the best storyteller. And her mother was too. ~ Marian Keyes

Perhaps one day in the far-off future, when I'm about eighty-nine, I might look back and say, "When I was a young-ish woman I fell in love with an intense charismatic man. He was way out of my league and when it ended it nearly killed me, but every woman should experience that sort of love once in their lives. Only once, mind, you mightn't survive a second bout. A bit like dengue fever, that way." I ~ Marian Keyes

I wanted to show her how disgusted I was by not eating a thing, but a chocolate cookie is a chocolate cookie. ~ Marian Keyes

In the same way that the stewards of the Titanic were more concerned about the unemptied ashtrays on the bar than the enormous hole in the side of the ship which was letting in zillions of gallons of water, I too was worrying about the unimportant and ignoring the vital. ~ Marian Keyes

When you're a mass-market writer, people think that you can just decide 'this happens, this happens, this happens', whereas with literary writers it's coming from their soul and their core. But with me it does come from my soul and my core, and my soul and my core often go AWOL, and then I've nothing to write. ~ Marian Keyes

Books are too personal as objects to be displayed, in case a potential buyer is put off by your taste for Nietzsche or Marian Keyes. You would not display the contents of your knicker and sock drawer, or your bathroom cabinet with its face creams and cough remedies, so why put off potential buyers with your taste in literature? ~ Linda Grant

Not only was he not mad, but he was a musician, and my favorite men had always been musicians or writers or anything that involved the creative process and behaving like tortured artists ... I found financial insecurity a great aphrodisiac. ~ Marian Keyes

Chick Lit uses humor to reflect life back to us. It's a very comforting genre, and it's the first time our generation has had a voice. It's a very important genre for all of those reasons. ~ Marian Keyes

When I opened my case in the hotel, he gestured excitedly at my snakeskin sandals, turquoise suede wedges and silver-speckled jellies. "But you've loads of shoes," he bellowed joyfully. I shook my head sadly. Men just don't get it, do they? They're definitely missing the shoe chromosome. ~ Marian Keyes

I'm not looking for pity, I'm really not, but I'm constantly uneasy and every day it is pretty much like getting up and going to war. Once I shift into the mindset of 'Yeah, you're alive. It's tough. Let's do what we can today,' it's easier. ~ Marian Keyes

But that's the point, Amy. It's easy to love someone when they're on their best behaviour - you can do that in your sleep. The real test is when they're - to use Neeve's expression - a pain in the hole. That's what love actually means. ~ Marian Keyes

You only grow up by living through the shit that life throws at you ~ Marian Keyes

I was anxious to please, even if I hated the recipient of my pleasing. My pleasee. ~ Marian Keyes

I employ this thing I called The Shovel List."
"A shovel..?"
"No, a shovel list. It's more of a conceptual thing. It's a list of all the people and things I hate so much I want to hit them in the face with a shovel. ~ Marian Keyes

Why would we 'swing' when we had praying? ~ Marian Keyes

He'd done his walls with paint from Holy Basil. God, I yearned for their colors. I hadn't been able to afford them myself but I knew their color chart like the back of my hand. His hall was done in Gangrene, his stairs in Agony and his living room
unless I was very much mistaken
in Dead Whale. Colors I personally very much approved of. ~ Marian Keyes

They were very, very kind to each other and, in my discombobulated state, this was soothing. ~ Marian Keyes

20:11 At what time is it acceptable to go to bed? I suspect nothing short of 10 p.m. will do. Okay, I can wait until 10 p.m. 20:14 I go to bed. I am my own person. I can do as I please. I am not hidebound by the silly, bourgeois rules of our society. ~ Marian Keyes

If you lose someone, you feel a loss, then after a while you fill in the hole in your life and the loss gradually gets smaller and smaller and eventually goes away. There's a point to the pain. There's a reason and a direction. ~ Marian Keyes

As if, within their high-pitched cries and songs, there are coded threats. 'Sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you get what you need and sometimes you get what you get.' Extract ~ Marian Keyes

sometimes things don't happen for a reason, sometimes things just happen. It ~ Marian Keyes

However, often when fatal things are happening, you don't know at the time that they're fatal. You get an inkling that they're Not Good, that they Haven't Helped, but only the passage of time will reveal just how bad they are. ~ Marian Keyes

To be able to scratch the sole of my foot using the big toe of the other foot is nothing short of a miracle. ~ Marian Keyes

I am more of an ambler. I once overheard my old boss in Dublin describe me as very "hello trees, hello flowers." It was intended as an insult and it fulfilled its brief; I was insulted. I had little interest in greeting trees and flowers but nor did I treat life as a treadmill, on which it was vital to keep fleeing forward in order to avoid being sucked off the back and out of the game. ~ Marian Keyes

I should have learned mindfulness, and it's too late now because it's no good learning it when you're already in crisis: you have to start when things are good. But only the very, very oddest would think, Hey, my life is perfect. I know! I'll sit and waste twenty minutes Observing My Thoughts without Judgement. ~ Marian Keyes

I think there is pressure on people to turn every negative into a positive, but we should be allowed to say, 'I went through something really strange and awful and it has altered me forever.' ~ Marian Keyes

If it was that beautiful, why did I leave you ~ Marian Keyes

Drink never drown anyone's sorrows," he went on. "It only teaches them how to swim. ~ Marian Keyes

The last time I'd been unwell, suicidally depressed, whatever you want to call it, the reactions of my friends and family had fallen into several different camps:
The Let's Laugh It Off merchants: Claire was the leading light. They hoped that joking about my state of mind would reduce it to a manageable size. Most likely to say, 'Feeling any mad urges to fling yourself into the sea?'
The Depression Deniers: they were the ones who took the position that since there was no such thing as depression, nothing could be wrong with me. Once upon a time I'd have belonged in that category myself. A subset of the Deniers was The Tough Love people. Most likely to say, 'What have you got to be depressed about?'
The It's All About Me bunch: they were the ones who wailed that I couldn't kill myself because they'd miss me so much. More often than not, I'd end up comforting them. My sister Anna and her boyfriend, Angelo, flew three thousand miles from New York just so I could dry their tears. Most likely to say, 'Have you any idea how many people love you?'
The Runaways: lots and lots of people just stopped ringing me. Most of them I didn't care about, but one or two were important to me. Their absence was down to fear; they were terrified that whatever I had, it was catching. Most likely to say, 'I feel so helpless … God, is that the time?' Bronagh – though it hurt me too much at the time to really acknowledge it – was the number one offender.
The Woo-Woo crew: i.e. ~ Marian Keyes

Optimism can be relearnt. ~ Marian Keyes

Slasher Hathaway marks his territory by spending money. He might as well have pissed on her. It means nothing. ~ Marian Keyes

Are you close to your family?'
I considered it. 'Close' was one way of putting it. 'We're close,' I said cautiously. 'But we're very mean to each other. This morning I told my mum that if she didn't stop acting old I was going to lobby for a law on euthanasia, so a bus would come round every Monday morning and take away all the old people who complained that they couldn't hear the telly or see the buttons on their mobile phone or that they had a pain in their hip, and put a bullet in their heads. But we're close. ~ Marian Keyes

He's a waiter, not a Mafia stooge, so what's he going to do? Blac pepper them to death? Compliment them into a coma? Run them over with the dessert trolley? ~ Marian Keyes

Back at my parents', Mum was waiting with a muffin for me. 'Banana and pecan. I know it's the wrong colour but would you try it? Are you okay?' she asked. 'You look a bit …'
'Grand,' I said. 'It's just the clouds. When it's overcast like this, it does my head in.'
A strange expression passed over her face. 'The sky is blue.'
I took a look out of the window; the sky was blue. 'When did that happen?'
'It's been blue all morning.'
But it didn't make things any better. I was still uneasy, just in a different way. The empty sky looked hard and cold and merciless. Couldn't they have put in some clouds to soften it up a bit? ~ Marian Keyes

One day we'll all be dead, and none of this will matter
-The Brightest Star in the Sky. ~ Marian Keyes

It actually felt harder, not easier, to be with people. The toughest challenge was my face; maintaining a 'normal' expression was utterly exhausting. ~ Marian Keyes

Love and kindness go hand in hand. ~ Marian Keyes

That's like the dog calling the cat's arse hairy! ~ Marian Keyes

When happiness makes a guest appearance in one's life,it's important to make the most of it.It may not stay around for long and when it has gone wouldn't it be terrible to think that all the time one could have been happy was wasted worrying when the happiness would be taken away. ~ Marian Keyes

Nkechi never tried to hide her bottom. She was proud of it. Fascinating to me. Irish girls' lives were a constant quest for bottom-disguising or bottom-reducing clothing tactics. We can learn much from other cultures. ~ Marian Keyes

paths would have already crossed ~ Marian Keyes

Mum insists on calling Sat Nav "the Talking Map," like she's a medieval peasant who believes in witchcraft. ~ Marian Keyes

There's no doubt that relationships do suffer when circumstances change profoundly. ~ Marian Keyes

I went grey at 12, my eyesight went at 17. I've been a crock from very early on. ~ Marian Keyes

A large battalion of my thoughts was marching determinedly on its way to Annoyance but it was distracted and took a wrong turn at Adam and found, to its surprise, that it had ended up in the entirely different destination of Dreamy Contentment. ~ Marian Keyes

Some people can make their ears move - it's their party trick. Don't feel bad if you can't do it. Just find yourself another party trick. ~ Marian Keyes

But Lucy, I've no money."
I put my face up to his and smiled.
He smiled back.
"Frankly my dear," I beamed, "I don't give a damn."
I had always wanted to say that. ~ Marian Keyes

I'm quite introverted but I'm not shy. ~ Marian Keyes

But I thought that if people behaved like victims they would become victims, if people expected the worst to happen then it invariably did.

I could see now how wrong I was. Sometimes people don't volunteer to be victims and they become victims anyway. ~ Marian Keyes

I've been so showered in life, beyond my wildest dreams, such as having a loving partner I never thought I'd have. ~ Marian Keyes

You will go on and meet someone else and I'll just be a chapter in your tale, but for me, you were, you are and you always will be, the whole story. ~ Marian Keyes

After a pause he says, 'Trust you to bring everything back to sweets.' He is a fine one to talk, him and his birds. ~ Marian Keyes

He didn't even attempt to smile and I knew then that I had lost him. ~ Marian Keyes

Why can't we love the right people? what is so wrong with us that we rush into situations to which we are manifestly unsuited, which will hurt us and others? why are we given emotions which we cannot control and which move in exact contradiction to what we really want? we are walking conflicts, internal battles on legs. ~ Marian Keyes

I know of people who don't believe it, but depression is an illness, but unlike, say, a broken leg, you don't know when it'll get better. ~ Marian Keyes

I couldn't be with people and I didn't want to be alone. Suddenly my perspective whooshed and I was far out in space, watching the world. I could see millions and millions of people, all slotted into their lives; then I could see me - I'd lost my place in the universe. It had closed up and there was nowhere for me to be. I was more lost than I had known it was possible for any human being to be. ~ Marian Keyes

I did all kinds of reckless things that look great if you're driving a fast car. I pulled away form traffic lights with a roar, leaving the other drivers staring bitterly after me - that was called "burning them up" said Daniel. I drove out in front of other cars - Daniel said that was called "cutting them up" and while we were stuck in a traffic jam, I winked and smiled at attractive men in other cars - Daniel said that was called "acting like a brazen trollop. ~ Marian Keyes

So I'm back again to the eternal question, the one that has plagued me all my life: How Do Other People Do It? How come they were given life's rule book and I missed out? Where was I when God was dispensing capability and cop on? Looking at shoes, probably. ~ Marian Keyes

My life was a wreck. I had nothing, no material possessions, unless debts counts. Fourteen pairs of shoes that were too small for me was all I had to show after a lifetime of profligate spending. I hadn't a job. I hadn't any qualifications. I'd achieved nothing with my life. I'd never been happy. I had no husband or boyfriend. ~ Marian Keyes

Wasn't this the man who had made hot-water bottles for me every month when I got my period, ~ Marian Keyes

They say the path of true love never runs smooth. Well, Luke and my true love's path didn't run at all, it limped along in new boots that were chafing its heels. Blistered and cut, red and raw, every hopping, lopsided step, a little slice of agony. ~ Marian Keyes

Is it not strange,' she said, 'that a little cruelty makes them love me all the more? ~ Marian Keyes

It's not like you take the right turning and you get everlasting happiness and you take the wrong one and your life's a disaster. In real life it's often impossible to tell which decision is the one you should make because what you stand to gain and what you stand to lose are sometimes-often-neck and neck. ~ Marian Keyes

Look," she sighed. "You might be a lovely lad, in fairness you look like a lovely lad, but I can't take the chance. My kids wouldn't even be able to remember what I was wearing to tell the police. And all the recent photographs of me are bad, very jowly. I couldn't have them stuck to the lamp posts around the city. On your way, son." (Woman to Matt, when he tried to give her a lift.) ~ Marian Keyes

I'd rather dig a ditch than go to a dinner party with people I don't know. ~ Marian Keyes

Where's that guy with the coffee?' 'I'm here.' Mannix had appeared. 'You went to Costa Rica for the beans? ~ Marian Keyes

You could have nothing with a teenage daughter in the house, not mascara, not ankle boots, not breadknives, not sedatives; they took everything, selfish little bitches! ~ Marian Keyes

Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted make-up. ~ Marian Keyes

It was only when the salt water of my tears ran into my cuts and made them sting
that I discovered I was crying. ~ Marian Keyes

Guilt is a self-indulgence. ~ Marian Keyes

I used to write in bed, starting when I woke up. I believe that creative work comes from our subconscious mind, so I try to keep the gap between sleep and writing as minimal as possible. ~ Marian Keyes

It never rains but it damn well pours and I was afraid I'd be washed away in the deluge. ~ Marian Keyes

Waiting to be 'better' is the wrong approach. It's learning to live with it. ~ Marian Keyes

Love is an emotion. It can't be seen or touched, and it is experienced differently by everyone, therefore it is difficult to measure. ~ Marian Keyes

Our health is our wealth. ~ Marian Keyes

You have the look of someone who'll die under general anaesthetic while having liposuction. ~ Marian Keyes

Ireland?" "Small wet place across the Irish Sea," Barry offered kindly. "Where they drink a lot?" Lisa said faintly. "And they never stop talking. That's the place. ~ Marian Keyes

And maybe I was wasting time trying to make sense of things: sometimes things don't happen for a reason, sometimes things just happen. ~ Marian Keyes

When I first met my husband, he had a very good job - company car, pension plan, grudging respect from his staff - the lot. I, on the other hand, was badly paid and devoid of ambition. Then I had a couple of books published and confounded all expectations by starting to earn more than he did. ~ Marian Keyes

I'm trying ... " How could I put it? "I'm trying to get far enough down the line so that I can remember." I stopped, then continued: "so that I can remember without the pain killing me"
And the days were stacking up. And weeks. And months. It was now almost the middle of June and he'd died in February, but I still felt like I'd just woken from a horrible dream, that I was suspended in that stunned, paralyzed state between sleep and reality where I was grasping for, but couldn't get a handle on normality. ~ Marian Keyes

I rang my mother to thank her for giving birth to me and she said, What choice had I? You were in there, how else were you going to get out? ~ Marian Keyes

I hated this business of being grown-up. I hated having to make decisions where I didn't know what was behind the door. I wanted a world where heroes and villains were clearly labeled. ~ Marian Keyes

Before I knocked the antidepressant back, I had a little word with it. Work, I urged. Take away this awful, awful feeling. ~ Marian Keyes

Although will never love anyone again, don't want to become bitter. Or creative. ~ Marian Keyes

Even she couldn't believe she'd spent so much money on household appliance. Money that she could just as easily have spend on handbags or bottles of wine. The only conclusion she could draw was that she was finally grown-up. Which was funny because in her head she was still sixteen and trying to decide what to do when she left school. ~ Marian Keyes

Men can be men and still get excited about other men kicking a ball around and they're never mocked, whereas it's easy for women to take mocking on board, to be belittled. Because we're used to it. ~ Marian Keyes

Accepting all that is given to me and all that is taken away. Recognizing that even loss and pain are gifts. ~ Marian Keyes

Insomnia is an enemy that attacks in many forms. Sometimes it shows up the moment I get into bed and lingers for a couple of hours. Other nights, it stays away until about 5 a.m. and then butts in and hangs around until twenty minutes before the alarm is due to go off. It's a full-time job, battling the fecker. ~ Marian Keyes

ends up sleeping in your bed. ~ Marian Keyes