Quotes from Marian Keyes

It is my honour to act as your ceiling

Slasher Hathaway marks his territory by spending money. He might as well have pissed on her. It means nothing.

dreaming. But I know it's real." "When I woke up this morning

The landscape of the desert changes very gradually as little breezes lift grains of sand and move them, sometimes a few feet, sometimes miles and miles, so that at the end of the day, when the sun sets, the face of the desert is completely different from the landscape it had in the morning when the sun rose on it.

This being human is a Guest House Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, Some momentary awareness comes As an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, Who violently sweep your house Empty of its furniture. Still treat each guest honourably, He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

No one can resurrect love once it has breathed its last.

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 and if human beings were cars, we would return them for being faulty.

In the same way that the stewards on the Titanic were more concerned about the unemptied ashtrays on the bar than the enormous hole in the side of the ship which was letting in zillions of gallons of water, I too was worrying about the unimportant and ignoring the vital. Sometimes it's easier that way. Because although there was little I could do about the huge hole, it was within my power to empty an asthray.

Stop, would you? My confidence is in bits. I'm forty-four and feeling every second of it, and even if I wanted to, there's no way I'd reveal this elderly body to a new man. It'd be like Game of Thrones when Melisandra takes off her necklace and ages nine hundred years.

It actually felt harder, not easier, to be with people. The toughest challenge was my face; maintaining a 'normal' expression was utterly exhausting.

But Lucy, I've no money. I put my face up to his and smiled. He smiled back. Frankly my dear, I beamed, I don't give a damn. I had always wanted to say that.

However, often when fatal things are happening, you don't know at the time that they're fatal. You get an inkling that they're Not Good, that they Haven't Helped, but only the passage of time will reveal just how bad they are.

The thing about personal growth, I've discovered, is that you rarely get any choice in it. It only ever happens as a side-effect of some loss or trauma.

Not everyone can find a cure for cancer. Someone has to make the dinners and sort the socks.

Caviar is strange and disgusting. That popping texture, its like Space Dust for gourmets.

Creating a healthy relationship is like creating a small, land-locked country. The borders are always under threat and every day you have to shore them up. So when something in the country implodes, the shockwaves move outwards and the borders push back until eventually the crisis subsides …

Unless it was an elaborate double-bluff on Wayne's part and it was so obvious as to be not obvious at all Ã¢â'¬Â¦ Christ, it was too early in the morning for this sort of mental gymnastics.

Before I knocked the antidepressant back, I had a little word with it. Work, I urged. Take away this awful, awful feeling.

You were the one who wanted me to come here with you, so you'd better have the bloody manners to talk to me. If you wanted to flirt with someone then why did you invite me? Sorry, Lucy; you're right; forgive me, Lucy. He sounded humble but he certainly did not look it. And you can knock of that naughty little boy smile, I continued.

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.)

The old Chinese proverb springs to mind - No pain, no gain.

Fight today's war today. Leave tomorrow's war until tomorrow.

Sometimes things fall apart so that better things can fall together – Marilyn Monroe

And maybe I was wasting time trying to make sense of things: sometimes things don't happen for a reason, sometimes things just happen.