Marian Keyes
You know what it's like. Sometimes, you meet a wonderful person, but it's only for a brief instant. Maybe on vacation or on a train or maybe even in a bus line. And they touch your life for a moment, but in a special way. And instead of mourning because they can't be with you for longer, or because you don't get the chance to know them better, isn't it better to be glad that you met them at all?Collection: Vacation
Love is blind, there was no doubt about it. In Tara's case it was also deaf, dumb, dyslexic, had a bad hip and the beginnings of Alzheimer'sCollection: Love Is
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.Collection: Book
I suppose I wanted to have my cake and eat it. But then again, what were you going to do with your cake if not eat it? Frame it? Use it as a sachet in your underwear drawer?Collection: Cake
The back windows looked out over the fields, then the Atlantic, maybe a hundred yards away. Actually, I'm just making that bit up. I had no idea how far away the sea was. Only men could do things like that. "Half a mile." "Fifty yards." Giving directions, that sort of thing. I could look at a woman and say "Thirty-six C." Or "Let's try it in the next size up." But I had no idea how far away Tim's sea was except that I wouldn't want to walk to it in high heels.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Hurt
The feel of them (books) and the smell of them. A bookshop was like an Aladdin's cave for me. Entire worlds and lives can be found just behind that glossy cover. All you had to do was look." Claire (Watermelon)Collection: Book
I've kind of realized life is meant to be tough and everybody is in psychic and spiritual discomfort of some sort and has a burden to carry. I've realized I'm not special.Collection: Spiritual
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.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Music
Waiting to be 'better' is the wrong approach. It's learning to live with it.Collection: Waiting
Political correctness is a minefieldCollection: Political
Nothing sinister. Just getting exercise. Although some might consider that sinister.Collection: Exercise
Hen nights should be banned. You're honour-bound to behave atrociously, then feel terribly ashamed afterwards. (This Charming Man)Collection: Night
Why do we have such a finite capacity for pleasure but an infinite one for pain?Collection: Pain
My friend Kathy is the only person who'll be halfway honest with me. 'Did you ever see a cowboy film, where someone has been caught by the Indians and tied between two wild stallions, each pulling in opposite directions?' she asked.I nodded mutely.'That's a bit what giving birth is like.Collection: Cowboy
For all of my life it was the size of my rear that caused me the most hand-wringing, but in this nearly-50 zone it is my stomach that is the problem. It seems to have broken free from its moorings and there is no knowing how far it will roam.Collection: Hands
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?Collection: Mother
I haven’t had Botox because my face is a bit lopsided and I depend on keeping everything animated so that people don’t notice.Collection: People
I knew it, I just knew it! The person who had the job of writing my life's dialogue used to work on a very low budget soap opera.Collection: Jobs
Besides, I'd seen a really nice pair of shoes yesterday in the mall and I wanted them for my own. I can't describe the feeling of immediate familiarity that rushed between us. The moment I clapped eyes on them I felt like I already owned them. I could only suppose that we were together in a former life. That they were my shoes when I was a serving maid in medieval Britain or when I was a princess in ancient Egypt. Or perhaps they were the princess and I was the shoes. Who's to know? Either way I knew that we were meant to be together.Collection: Nice
... 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.Collection: Flower
I love Prada. Not so much the clothes, which are for malnourished thirteen-year-olds, but I covet, with covety covetousness, the shoes and handbags. Like, I LOVE them. If I was given a choice between world peace and a Prada handbag, I'd dither. (I'm not proud of this, I'm only saying.)Collection: Years
I am different when my nails are done. I am more dynamic. I gesticulate more, I am better at scaring my staff. I can indicate impatience by drumming on tabletops and I can wrap up a meeting with a few choice clatters.Collection: Choices
Her world had shrunk - no matter who she was with, she'd prefer to be with him. That's what happened when you fell in love - you only want to see them.Collection: Love You
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.Collection: Letting Go
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.Collection: Depression
The old Chinese proverb springs to mind - No pain, no gain.Collection: Pain
One day we'll all be dead, and none of this will matter" -The Brightest Star in the Sky.Collection: Stars
You've recognised a fundamental feature of an addict's life. Maintaining your habit is so important you've no real interest in anything else.Collection: Real
As you know, I don't believe in fear, just an invention by men so they get all the money and good jobs.Collection: Jobs
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.Collection: Morning
I loved being in my own head so much, it was getting harder and harder being with other people.Collection: People
I sighed. "What is life but fleeting moments of happiness strung together on necklace of despair?Collection: Despair
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.Collection: Real
How to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans.Collection: Laughing
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.Collection: Running
God! 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. Where ominous music comes on-screen so you can't possibly mistake him. Where someone asks you to choose between playing with the beautiful princess in the fragrant garden and being eaten by the hideous monster in the foul-smelling pit. Not exactly a difficult one, now is it? Not something that you would agonize over, or that would make you lose a night's sleep?Collection: Beautiful
I had spent my whole life feeling homesick. The only difference between the two of us was that I didn't know what or where home was.Collection: Home
I'd rather eat nothing than eat a carrot.Collection: Carrots
Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted make-up.Collection: Relationship
He seemed wild and dangerous and carefree--well, he would, would'nt he? What were motorcycles and black leather pants if not the uniform of a wild, dangerous and carefree man?Collection: Men
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.Collection: Our Generation
Although will never love anyone again, don't want to become bitter. Or creative.Collection: Creative
In an unpredictable and unpleasant world it was both unusual and very pleasant to hear what I wanted to hear.Collection: World
Minsk! How pissed-off that sounded! It was great. You could scare the bejayzus out of someone if you said it right.Collection: Scare
No more humiliation for me, thanks very much. No more swallowing my anger. Honestly, I couldn't manage another mouthful. But it was delicious. Did you make it yourself?Collection: Swallowing
It was only when the salt water of my tears ran into my cuts and made them sting that I discovered I was crying.Collection: Cutting