Maeve Binchy
29 quotes
Biography
Anne Maeve Binchy Snell was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, columnist, and speaker. Her novels were characterised by a sympathetic and often humorous portrayal of small-town life in Ireland, and surprise endings.
"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."
"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."
"I write exactly as I speak, so therefore I would not say any writer influenced me at all."
"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'. You don't wear all your jewellery at once. You're much more believable if you talk in your own voice."
"It's like if you don't go to a dance you can never be rejected but you'll never get to dance either."
"(A) writer, a man I loved and he loved me and we got married and it was great and is still great. He believed I could do anything, just as my parents had believed all those years ago, and I started to write fiction and that took off fine. And he loved Ireland, and the fax was invented so we writers could live anywhere we liked, instead of living in London near publishers."
"Suddenly they asked me, as only the French would, ‘Madame, what is your philosophy of life?’ What a cosmic question, but I had to answer, and answer quickly, because it was live. So I said, in French, ‘I think that you’ve got to play the hand that you’re dealt and stop wishing for another hand.’"
"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."
"I often wonder that if I had met Hitler, I reckon I might have found some streak of decency in him."
"On my 100th birthday, piloting Gordon and myself into the side of a mountain."
"She had time for everybody. Perhaps because her stories came from all of us and for all of us."
"She rearranged a whole wall of books so it was completely full of Irish writers. She didn't look like she was any trouble so no one caught her."
"She had that great gift of making you feel life was worth living. A very, very special person."
"She was charming, intelligent, warm, generous in her time, with her effort, with her work. I just had the greatest of respect for her because she suffered badly from arthritis, and she had a lot of pain, and she never complained, you know."
"If you woke up each morning, and immediately dwelt on your ills, what sort of a day could you look forward to?"
"Her bed felt huge and empty now, and when she slept, she did so with her arm around a pillow. She dreamed of him almost every night, sometimes good dreams of happy days and joyful times; often they were terrible dreams of abandonment, loss and sorrow. She didn't know which was worse: every morning she woke afresh to the knowledge that he was gone and he would never come back. It would never be all right again."
"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."
"The great thing about getting older is that you become more mellow. Things aren't as black and white, and you become much more tolerant. You can see the good in things much more easily rather than getting enraged as you used to do when you were young."
"I have been lucky enough to travel a lot, meet great people in many lands. I have liked almost everyone I met along the way."
"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."
"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"
"The whole art of life is knowing the right time to say things."
"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."
"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."
"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."