Quotes from Mary Kay Andrews

As a hopeless romantic, I'm drawn to stories of improbable beginnings.

I wanted a garret hideaway to write in like Jo March in 'Little Women.'

My perfect beach town isn't a fancy resort or glitzy planned community. It's a place with a hometown grocery that has decent meat, seafood, and a deli; a couple of ice cream shops; and a handful of good restaurants - where the island-wide dress code is 'no shoes, no shirt, no problem.'

I guess because I'm a washed-up journalist, I always do a lot of research.

Although I married a sports-loving jock, I myself am not only not athletic, I am acutely, completely uncoordinated.

I had never thought about writing a novel. But I had two young kids, and I realized that if I could write a novel, I could work at home.

The story of my holiday decorating is if Ralph Lauren was trapped in a 1950s Woolworth, this is what it would look like.

The best way to heal a broken heart, it turns out, is to find a way to move past the hurt.

Southern women, especially upper-middle-class women, care deeply about appearances and what other people think.

As soon as I started reading, I found myself drawn to fictional character's homes as much as I was to the characters themselves.

I always wanted to use my newspaper background in a novel.

My characters are turned upside down and trying to reinvent themselves but don't need a white knight. They can save themselves in a crisis.

I was supposed to be working on 'The Weekenders,' but I was blocked. I got this crazy idea that I would make Christmas stockings out of blankets.

I wasn't always overweight. I was a skinny little punk of a kid with severe asthma. When I got married at the age of 22, I wore a cut-down size eight wedding gown.

One of the things that attracts me to vintage and antique things is they have stories, and even if I don't know the stories, I make them up.

Never, ever ask a former clergyman to say the blessing over a holiday dinner. Not if you like your dinner warm, anyway.

And that point is, it doesn't matter how long you've known somebody. People change. Or you don't really know them as well as you thought you did in the first place.

I may be furious and sad about what happened with us, but that doesn't make me believe that what we had wasn't real. And it doesn't make me believe that I won't find something that real again.

Don't never depend on somebody else to take care of you, sugar. Trust in the Lord, and then you just take care of yourself, and things will work out fine.

They'd like the world to think they're hot snot on a gold platter. But really, they're just cold boogers on a paper plate.

Never trust a man who hollers at the help

You don't have to be Southern to have good manners. And you don't have to be a Yankee to make a total ass of yourself.

Sometimes the people we think we know the best are the ones with secrets we can't even fathom.

It made perfect sense to me. My whole life I'd gone along with somebody else's plans. Not wanting to rock the boat and put myself first. After all, most of the time I didn't know what my own plans were. But the need for my own dream was screaming to get out of me.