Mary Balogh
I fancy the romantic image of myself being soothed and inspired by music and the sweet aroma and flickering lights of candles.Collection: Romantic
I have a British voice and a rather formal one at that, having been brought up in post-WWII Britain. My voice is perfectly suited to the sort of book I write, I think. It would not fit a contemporary, besides which I do not know enough about the contemporary world to write convincingly or comfortably about it!
I have written more than 100 novels and novellas since 1983 - I was first published in 1985. There was an overlap of three years with my teaching career, but finally I felt good enough about my writing career to quit teaching and write full time.
Since 1988, I have been writing steadily. I did decide a couple of years or so ago to scale back to writing one book a year - a sort of semi-retirement. But I never did have much success with that plan!
I don't know quite how a story develops in my head. It is a bit chaotic. If I am working on a series, one of the main characters at least is already in existence as well as some setting and minor characters. Finding the other main character can be a challenge. Sometimes this character already exists in a minor role in another book.
I do what I love and what I always dreamed of doing for a living. I write love stories, and I have always had a publisher willing to publish them. I have a sizable and loyal audience. I have made best-seller lists and won awards. What more could anyone ask for?
I am a bit of a head-in-the-sand person as concerns things happening beyond the walls of my study. And I don't feel particularly guilty about that. I figure that my primary job is producing the very best stories I am capable of writing, and that is what I concentrate upon doing. That is within my control.
I think I wrote 'The Trysting Place' in about three weeks. But it was inexperience that made me have to do that. I didn't feel good about the book all the time I was writing it. It felt a bit like wading through molasses.
It's this idea that success changes you as a person... I've never seen my career that way.
I have people introducing themselves to me: 'I am your publicist; what can I do for you?' But I have never learned how to use a publicist.
I never think that any writer can teach someone how to write.
Everyone writes differently. I hope to get people energized so they'll want to rush home to write.
A sunrise or sunset can be ablaze with brilliance and arouse all the passion, all the yearning, in the soul of the beholder.Collection: Passion
Every moment is a moment of decision, and every moment turns us inexorably in the direction of the rest of our lives.Collection: Decision
There is no happily-ever-after to run to. We have to work for happiness.Collection: Running
Nothing is permanently perfect. But there are perfect moments and the will to choose what will bring about more perfect moments.Collection: Perfect
I do believe in fate, Anne-not the blind fate that gives one no freedom of choice, but a fate that sets down a pattern for each of our lives and gives us choices, numerous choices, by which to find that pattern and be happy.Collection: Believe
I am not sure what lonliness is," she said. "If it is not literally being solitary, is it the fear of solitude, of being alone with oneself? I feel no such fear. I like being alone." "What do you fear then?" he asked her. She glanced briefly at him and smiled, a fragile expression that spoke for itself even before she found words. "Never finding myself again.Collection: Like Being Alone
The bad part is life continues. The good part is that the pain goes away.Collection: Pain
And she was terribly aware that she was alive. Not just living and breathing, but ...alive.Collection: Breathing
There is nothing worse, is there," she said, "than a past that has never been fully dealt with. One can convince oneself, that it is all safely in the past and forgotten about, but the very fact that we can tell ourselves that it is forgotten proves that it is not.Collection: Past
I prefer to believe the opposite - that there is always an indestructible beauty at the heart of darkness.Collection: Believe
And yet day and night meet fleetingly at twilight and dawn," he said, lowering his voice again and narrowing his eyes and moving his head a quarter of an inch closer to hers. "And their merging sometimes affords the beholder the most enchanted moments of all the twenty four hours. A sunrise or sunset can be ablaze with brilliance and arouse all the passion, all the yearning, in the soul of the beholder.Collection: Moving
Fear is a powerful beast, if it is allowed the mastery.Collection: Powerful
Have you noticed," she asked him, "how we live much of our lives in the past and most of the rest of it in the future? Have you noticed how often the present moment slips by quiet unnoticed?Collection: Past
I have always been a spectator of life, you know, never a participant. Never. But now I am. Today I am, and I an awed and deliriously happy. This is the adventure I asked for, the adventure I am having I will be forever grateful to you.Collection: Grateful
I can be hurt, she said, only by people I respect.Collection: Hurt
Life, she realized, so often became a determined, relentless avoidance of pain-of one's own, of other people's. But sometimes pain had to be acknowledged and even touched so that one could move into it and through it and past it. Or else be destroyed by it.Collection: Pain
Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places. What if love was not safe at all?Collection: What If
Love did not have to make sense. It did not have to be worthy. It did not have to be earned. It did not have to woo. It just simply was.Collection: Worthy
This time her heart would not break, even though it would hurt and hurt for a long time to come. Perhaps for the rest of her life. But it would not break. She had the strength to go on alone.Collection: Hurt
I wish," he said, "I had known at eighteen what I know now - that there are some things on which one does not compromise.Collection: Wish
Suddenly, and for the first time, he was at the center of his own life, living it and loving it.Collection: Firsts
The real meaning of things lies deep down and the real meaning of things is always beautiful because it is simply love.Collection: Beautiful
I know it is something of a cliche to say that love makes all things possible, but I believe it does. It is not a magic wand that can be waved over life to make it all sweet and lovely and trouble free, but it can give the energy to fight the odds and win.Collection: Sweet
Sometimes even the imagination lets one down.Collection: Imagination
The people we love are usually stronger than we give them credit for. It is the nature of love, perhaps, to want to shoulder all the pain rather than see the loved one suffer. But sometimes pain is better than emptiness. I have been so empty Kit. All my life. So full of emptiness. That is strange paradox is nit not - full of emptiness?Collection: Pain
Did she ever feel nostalgia for any of her girlhood dreams? But life was made up of a succession of dreams, some few to be realized, most to be set aside as time went on, one or two to persist for a lifetime. It was knowing when to abandon a dream, perhaps, that mattered and distinguished the successful people in life from the sad, embittered persons who never moved on from the first of life's great disappointments. Or from the airy dreamers who never really lived life at all.Collection: Dream
Now I must live with the consequences of the choice I made. And I will not call it the wrong choice. That would be foolish and pointless. That choice led me to everything that has happened since, including this very moment, and the choices I make today or tomorrow or next week will lead me to the next and next present moments in my life. It is all a journey, Miss Jewell. I have come to understand that that is what life is all about-a journey and the courage and energy always to take the next step and the next without judgement about what was right and what was wrong.Collection: Journey
And he knew at that moment that love world never die, that it would never fade away altogether. The time might come when he would meet and marry someone else. He might even be reasonably happy. But there would always be a deep precious place in his heart that belonged to his first real love.Collection: Real
Occasionally we all do wrong things from right motives. Only time can prove us right or wrong. The past is the past. Nothing can change it now, and who is to say that it was all wrong, anyway?Collection: Past
Why do I want to run from happiness?Collection: Running
Love, I have discovered, does not judge. It just is.Collection: Judging
Was memory always as much of a burden as it could sometimes be a blessing.Collection: Memories
I do not admire greatness that has no substance.Collection: Greatness
But if one had everything one could ever need or want, what was left to dream of?Collection: Dream
It was strange how the heart clung to hope even when there was no reasonable basis for it, Morgan found. And how life went on.Collection: Heart
Always guarding one's real, precious self in a cocoon of tranquility within a thousand masks. Life itself had become a secret affair.Collection: Life
She was not sorry. And if it was the wine telling her that, then she would tell the wine the same thing tomorrow. She was not sorry.Collection: Sorry
I do beg you to have some regard for my pride. A million years? I assure you I would stop asking after the first thousand.Collection: Pride