Marian Keyes Quotes

I'm sure I've posted this sometime last year or the year before, but anyway, I am her number one fan :D

"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)


"What doesn't kill us makes us funnier."
— Marian Keyes (The Other Side of the Story)


"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?)


"Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted make-up."
— Marian Keyes (Watermelon)


"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)


"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)


"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


"How to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans."
— Marian Keyes (The Other Side of the Story)

"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)

"Why do we have such a finite capacity for pleasure but an infinite one for pain?"
— Marian Keyes (The Other Side of the Story)

"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?)

"When God closes one door, He slams another in your face"
— Marian Keyes (The Other Side of the Story)

"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."
— Marian Keyes (Anybody Out There?)

"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. From Rachel's Holiday."
— Marian Keyes

"Nothing sinister. Just getting exercise. Although some might consider that sinister."
— Marian Keyes (Anybody Out There?)

"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."
— Marian Keyes

... 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."
— Marian Keyes

"Nkechi never tried to hide her bottom. She was proud of it. Fascinating to me. Irish girls' lives were a constant quest for bottom-disguising or bottom-reducing clothing tactics. We can learn much from other cultures. "
— Marian Keyes

"Minsk! How pissed-off that sounded! It was great. You could scare the bejayzus out of someone if you said it right."
— Marian Keyes (The Brightest Star in the Sky)

"I'd rather eat nothing than eat a carrot."
— Marian Keyes (Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married)

"Political correctness is a minefield"
— Marian Keyes (Angels)

"In an unpredictable and unpleasant world it was both unusual and very pleasant to hear what I wanted to hear."
— Marian Keyes (Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married)

"...as you know, I don't believe in fear, just an invention by men so they get all the money and good jobs..."
— Marian Keyes (Anybody Out There?)

"Hen nights should be banned. You're honour-bound to behave atrociously, then feel terribly ashamed afterwards.

(This Charming Man)"
— Marian Keyes


"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."
— Marian Keyes

"Rough as a badger's arse"
— Marian Keyes

"Didn't go in, just hovered outside like homeless person because (a) place was too small and Detta would have spotted me, and (b) once you're through doors of shop like that, if you try to leave without buying anything, they shoot you in the back with sniper's rifle."
— Marian Keyes (Anybody Out There?)

"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."
— Marian Keyes (Under the Duvet: Shoes, Reviews, Having the Blues, Builders, Babies, Families and Other Calamities)

"Caviar is strange and disgusting. That popping texture, its like Space Dust for gourmets."
— Marian Keyes (The Brightest Star in the Sky)

"Look," she sighed. "You might be a lovely lad, in fairness you look like a lovely lad, but I can't take the chance. My kids wouldn't even be able to remember what I was wearing to tell the police. And all the recent photographs of me are bad, very jowly. I couldn't have them stuck to the lamp posts around the city. On your way, son." (Woman to Matt, when he tried to give her a lift.)"
— Marian Keyes (The Brightest Star in the Sky)


"Katie's mum, Penny, said "I don't know why you're wasting your time with him. If he's forty-two and never been married, he's hardly likely to get married now."
And Katie's sister Naomi had the darkest prediction. "He'll make mincemeat of you."
He won't," Katie protested. "I'm not going to fall for him."
So why are you bothering at all?"
Just killing time until I die."
— Marian Keyes (The Brightest Star in the Sky)