Top 100 Binchy Quotes
#1. Any one could write a book," said the taxi driver. " Yes, they could, but they DON'T," said Maeve Binchy
Maeve Binchy
#2. My mother was a trained nurse, and she'd tell me that patients would fight as they were administered anaesthetic, grappling to get the gas mask off their face.
Maeve Binchy
#3. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#4. I have always believed that life is too short for rows and disagreements. Even if I think I'm right, I would prefer to apologize and remain friends rather than win and be an enemy.
Maeve Binchy
#5. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#6. You can't lay down laws for what people think and hope.
Maeve Binchy
#7. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#9. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#10. I was just lucky I lived in this time of mass-market paperbacks.
Maeve Binchy
#11. I didn't have a sweet tooth, but I liked butter, and I liked sauces, and I liked wine ... and curry ... and cheeses.
Maeve Binchy
#12. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#13. That's the kind of motif I bring to the books - that people take charge of their own lives.
Maeve Binchy
#14. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#15. Who knows what light housework means? One nun's light could be another nun's penal servitude.
Maeve Binchy
#16. I'm particularly fond of boned chicken breasts with a little garlic under the flesh and cooked in a casserole for 40 minutes with a jar of olives, some cherry tomatoes and a spoonful of olive oil.
Maeve Binchy
#17. I think I'm brave because I've made decisions based - I hope not entirely selfishly - on what I think is right for me to do next.
Maeve Binchy
#18. 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?
Maeve Binchy
#19. I do try to live every day as if it were my last, and it has worked for me so far.
Maeve Binchy
#20. I'm a great will maker. I've made my will every year since I was 21.
Maeve Binchy
#21. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#22. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#23. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#24. I suppose, to be fair, I don't miss the energy of youth very much - because I was never fit. So it doesn't matter not being able to walk miles, striding the countryside, taking deep breaths and enjoying the scenery. That was never on my agenda.
Maeve Binchy
#25. The whole art of life is knowing the right time to say things.
Maeve Binchy
#26. Never mind money; the gifts of time and skill call into being the richest marketplace in the world.
Maeve Binchy
#27. Most people, once the money started getting bigger, thought we would buy a millionaire's house looking out at the sea - but what would two middle-aged people do that for? We were sensible enough when we got it.
Maeve Binchy
#28. It was true what they had been saying: if people remember you, then you're not dead. It was very comforting.
Maeve Binchy
#29. I've seen a lot of people buy my books and then fall asleep on the plane soon afterwards.
Maeve Binchy
#30. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#31. Modern surgery has been like a miracle to those who thought the pain was going to go on forever.
Maeve Binchy
#32. I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.
Maeve Binchy
#33. You don't wear all your jewellery at once. You're much more believable if you talk in your own voice.
Maeve Binchy
#34. He had not known it was possible to love a little human being as he loved Annie.
Maeve Binchy
#35. I've had a good life, full of more success and happiness than I ever expected.
Maeve Binchy
#36. To heal would be to open the wound,examine it and forgive
Maeve Binchy
#37. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#38. Everybody is a hero in their own story if you just look.
Maeve Binchy
#39. I have no idea whether what I write will be of the remotest interest to anyone else. Some mornings when I read what I wrote the previous day I think it's fairly entertaining; other times I think it's pure rubbish. The main thing is not to take any notice, not to be elated or upset, just keep going.
Maeve Binchy
#40. Success is not like a cake that needs to be divided. It's more like a heap of stones - a cairn. If someone is successful, they add a stone to the cairn. It gets very high and can be seen from all over the world. That's how I see it.
Maeve Binchy
#41. If you write what you know about, you will always be on safe ground. I am very edgy and nervous about going into territories I know nothing about. That's why you don't find much high finance, group sex, or yachting parties in my stories.
Maeve Binchy
#42. 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
Maeve Binchy
#43. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#44. In my stories, whenever there's somebody wonderful and charming and bright and intelligent, that's me!
Maeve Binchy
#45. 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.'
Maeve Binchy
#46. I've been very lucky and I have a happy old age with good family and friends still around.
Maeve Binchy
#47. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#48. Happiness is knowing and appreciating what you've got. I am very, very, very grateful for what, to me, is dead easy.
Maeve Binchy
#49. Her life was like her house - a colorful fantasy where anything was possible if you wanted it badly enough.
Maeve Binchy
#50. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#51. Writing is a bit like going on a diet; you should either tell everyone or no one.
Maeve Binchy
#53. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#54. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#55. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#56. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#57. Money doesn't make you happy, but it gives a zone of comfort around you.
Maeve Binchy
#58. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#59. If you're going on a plane journey, you're more likely to take one of my stories than 'Finnegan's Wake.'
Maeve Binchy
#60. My memory of my home was that it was very happy, and that there was more fun and life there than there was anywhere else.
Maeve Binchy
#61. 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
Maeve Binchy
#62. All I ever wanted to do is to write stories that people will enjoy and feel at home with.
Maeve Binchy
#63. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#64. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#65. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#66. 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!
Maeve Binchy
#67. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#68. We have to make our own happiness, and we have to make our own decisions and play the hand that is dealt to us.
Maeve Binchy
#69. 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
#70. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#71. he must not know how much power he had to move her.
Maeve Binchy
#72. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#73. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#74. I was fat, and that was awful because when you're young and sensitive, you think the world is over because you're fat.
Maeve Binchy
#75. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#76. I grew up thinking it was wonderful to be big and strong and to be able to knock down other children in the playground if I needed to. But I never felt the need.
Maeve Binchy
#77. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#78. Of course I wanted children. Bright, gorgeous, loving children. I could almost see them.
Maeve Binchy
#79. She put her head down on the table and cried all the tears that she knew she should have cried in the past year and a half. But they weren't ready then, they were now.
Maeve Binchy
#80. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#81. 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".
Maeve Binchy
#82. My brother married young, and his is the best marriage I know.
Maeve Binchy
#83. In my experience ,lights at the end of the tunnel tend to flicker out .
Maeve Binchy
#84. She soon called a halt to the work. Judy's great success was that she stopped her helpers before they got tired.
Maeve Binchy
#85. God, Benny, don't blow your nose like that in the church. You'd lift half the congregation out of their seats," Patsy warned.
Maeve Binchy
#86. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#87. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#88. I live in Ireland near the sea, only one mile from where I grew up - that's good, since I've known many of my neighbours for between 50-60 years. Gordon and I play chess every day, and we are both equally bad. We play chatty, over-talkative bad bridge with friends every week.
Maeve Binchy
#89. Nobody is ordinary if you know where to look.
Maeve Binchy
#90. I am a big, confident, happy woman who had a loving childhood, a pleasant career, and a wonderful marriage. I feel very lucky.
Maeve Binchy
#91. No point in destroying Wednesday thinking about Friday. This one-day-at-a-time thing really worked. Friday
Maeve Binchy
#92. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#93. You say to yourself: 'What could people, in all these countries, find in my books?' and yet I think we're all the same, anywhere. Everybody is a hero or a dramatic person in their own story if you just know where to look.
Maeve Binchy
#94. I look placid, you see, that's why people think I'm fine. Inside I worry a lot.
Maeve Binchy
#95. I'm getting better, happier, and nicer as I grow older, so I would be terrific in a couple of hundred years time.
Maeve Binchy
#96. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#97. I wore miniskirts in the days when no fat girls should have, and with total delight.
Maeve Binchy
#98. My father went to work by train every day. It was half an hour's journey each way, and he would read a paperback in four journeys. After supper, we all sat down to read - it was long before TV, remember!
Maeve Binchy
#99. 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.
Maeve Binchy
#100. 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.
Maeve Binchy
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