Quotes from Marian Keyes

At all times a heavy ceramic casserole would sit on a pale blue Aga, so should people drop in unexpectedly, I could wander out in my bare feet, welcome them warmly, give them dinner, then press my home-made elderberry wine on them. I would be like Nigella Lawson.

mistakenly thinking that if you improve your hair you can improve your life.

So when you're friends with someone that long they're in your corner.

La corrente della vita mi spingeva in avanti, ma io resistevo. Preferivo il passato, non ancora convinta che con Shay fosse davvero finita. Quando lo avevo salutato sul traghetto non sapevo che sarebbero trascorsi quindici anni prima di rivederlo.

Love makes the world go round

She liked to pretend that she liked everyone, in the hope that it might help her jump the line into Heaven.

But to me, butterflies were slightly sneaky; all they were, were moths in embroidered jackets. And, yes, moths were creepy and their flapping wings made a nasty, papery sound – but at least they were honest; they were brown, they were dull, they were stupid (flying into flames at the drop of a hat). All in all, they hadn't much going for them but they didn't pretend to be anything other than what they were.

I wanted to show her how disgusted I was by not eating a thing, but a chocolate cookie is a chocolate cookie.

And Marrakech, a place that Himself had particularly loved, transpired to be not so wonderful for me because – in one of those unfortunate oversights – I didn't have a penis. They're not so keen on women in Marrakech. To put it mildly. But that's a different story.

preferably desperate. And

Go home, old woman, I'm tired and you're annoying me.

She had once tried to copy Jojo's sexy wink – drink had been taken – but she had simply succeeded in dislodging her contact lens which had made her eyelid flutter like a trapped butterfly.

And not actually the great sacrifice that I'm making

Honestly, if you're looking for love and you're not too choosy, hang around a hardware store fingering screws.

noticed that he had small hands and, worse again, small feet. You could barely see his shoes under the cuffs of his trousers. I hated men with small hands and feet. It made them seem very unmanly, like imps or gnomes.

Adulthood, for all its opportunities, meant the simultaneous accumulation of loss. Momentarily the emptiness was unbearable.

I've been heartbroken before. I really don't know if I have the energy for it again.

There are some women, who, when heartbroken, have no interest whatsoever in other men. I wasn't one of them. On the contrary, I yearned for male approval as a form of restoration. Call me shallow, call me needy, call me whatever you like so long as you call me.

They shared a hostel with other broken, displaced people, from the worst parts of the world.

Was it my fault that I wanted a Schrödinger's cat of a boyfriend, a man who was several directly conflicting things simultaneously.

as you know, here at Randolph Media we reward hard work." Lisa twinkled prettily at the patent lie. Like many companies in the Western world, Randolph Media rewarded hard work with poor pay, increasing workloads, demotions and on-a-second's redundancies.

We always want what we can't have.

But life was an irrepressible kind of a chap, and no matter how much I tried to pretend that he wasn't there he kept poking his head through any gaps in my defenses and trying to get me to play with him.

Call off the search for a "why", Rachel,' she finished on. 'You don't need it.