Marian Keyes > Quotes

“Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted make-up.”
― Marian Keyes, Watermelon

“It was ironic, really - you want to die because you can't be bothered to go on living - but then you're expected to get all energetic and move furniture and stand on chairs and hoist ropes and do complicated knots and attach things to other things and kick stools from under you and mess around with hot baths and razor blades and extension cords and electrical appliances and weedkiller. Suicide was a complicated, demanding business, often involving visits to hardware shops.

And if you've managed to drag yourself from the bed and go down the road to the garden center or the drug store, by then the worst is over. At that point you might as well just go to work.”
― Marian Keyes, Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married

“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, Anybody Out There?

“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, The Other Side of the Story

“What doesn't kill us makes us funnier.”
― Marian Keyes, The Other Side of the Story

“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.”
― Marian Keyes, Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married

“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, The Other Side of the Story

“I never wear flats. My shoes are so high that sometimes when I step out of them, people look around in confusion and ask, "Where'd she go?" and I have to say, "I'm down here.”
― Marian Keyes

“I loved being in my own head so much, it was getting harder and harder being with other people.”
― Marian Keyes, Anybody Out There?

“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)”
― Marian Keyes, Watermelon

“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?”
― Marian Keyes, Watermelon

“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's”
― Marian keyes, Last Chance Saloon: A Hilarious Romantic Comedy About Best Friends and Heartbreak in Their Thirties

“Why do we have such a finite capacity for pleasure but an infinite one for pain?”
― Marian Keyes, The Other Side of the Story

“How to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans.”
― Marian Keyes, The Other Side of the Story

“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.”
― Marian Keyes, Rachel's Holiday

“Relationship gurus always said that an attraction based on friendship and mutual respect was far more likely to stay the course - and the bastards were right.”
― Marian Keyes, The Other Side of the Story

“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, Watermelon

“Feathery Stokers - There is no definitive list but here are some examples. Men who didn’t eat red meat were Feathery Strokers. Men who used postshave balm instead of slapping stinging aftershave onto their tender skin were Feathery Strokers. Men who noticed your shoes and handbags were Feathery Strokers. (Or Jolly Boys.) Men who said pornography was exploitation of women were Feathery Strokers. (Or liars.) Men who said pornography was exploitation of men as much as women were of the scale. All straight men from San Francisco were Feather Strokers. All academics with beards were Feathery Stokers. Men who stayed friends with their ex-girlfriends were Feathery Strokers. Especially if they called them their “ex-partner.” Men who did Pilates were Feathery Strokers. Men who said, “I have to take care of myself right now” were screaming Feathery Strokers. (Even I’d go along with that.) ~Jacqui”
― Marian Keyes, Anybody Out There?

“Show me a person who doesn't have a past and I'll show you a boring bastard”
― Marian Keyes, Last Chance Saloon: A Hilarious Romantic Comedy About Best Friends and Heartbreak in Their Thirties

“Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted makeup.
Forget the laughs, forget the fights, forget the sex, forget the jealousy. But take off your hat and observe a moment's silence for the legions of unknown tubes of foundation, mascara, eyeliner, blusher and lipstick who died that it might all have been possible. But who died in vain.”
― Marian Keyes, Watermelon

“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, Anybody Out There?

“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.”
― Marian Keyes, Watermelon

“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 God closes one door, He slams another in your face”
― Marian Keyes, The Other Side of the Story

“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?”
― Marian Keyes, Watermelon

“when we’re in emotional pain, we think it’s a mistake, something that needs to be remedied. ‘We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and fall apart. Then they come together and fall apart again. It’s just like that.”
― 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, Angels

“I'd rather eat nothing than eat a carrot.”
― Marian Keyes, Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married

“Nothing sinister. Just getting exercise. Although some might consider that sinister.”
― Marian Keyes, Anybody Out There?

“People get sick and sometimes they get better and sometimes they don't. And it doesn't matter if the sickness is cancer or if it's depression. Sometimes the drugs work and sometimes they don't. Sometimes the drugs work for a while and then they stop. Sometimes the alternative stuff works and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes you wonder if no outside interference makes any difference at all; if an illness is like a storm, if it simply has to run its course and, at the end of it, depending on how robust you are, you will be alive. Or you will be dead.”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close