In honor of the release of Maeve Binchy’s posthumously published final novel, A WEEK IN WINTER, we wanted to bring you the Top Ten Maeve Binchy Quotes that we have gathered. Enjoy and be inspired!
1. “There are no makeovers in my books. The ugly duckling does not become a beautiful swan. She becomes a confident duck, able to take charge of her own life and problems.”
2. “Everybody is a hero in their own story if you just look.”
3. “An English journalist called Michael Viney told me when I was 25, that I would write well if I cared a lot what I was writing about. That worked. I went home that day and wrote about parents not understanding their children as well as we teachers did, and it was published the very next week.”
4. “If you woke up each morning, and immediately dwelt on your ills, what sort of a day could you look forward to?”
5. “All I ever wanted to do is to write stories that people will enjoy and feel at home with.”
6. “I never wanted to write. I just wrote letters home from a kibbutz in Israel to reassure my parents that I was still alive and well fed and having a great time. They thought these letters were brilliant and sent them to a newspaper. So I became a writer by accident.”
7. ““She put her head down on the table and cried all the tears that she knew she should have cried in the past year and a half. But they weren’t ready then, they were now.”
8. “You can’t lay down laws for what people think and hope.”
9. “The most important thing to realize is that everyone is capable of telling a story. It doesn’t matter where we were born or how we grew up.”
10. “What do I do for friends? Not enough, but I can help them write difficult letters because I know writing should always be shorter rather than longer and clearer rather than more complicated. I make lists of good DVDs to rent so they won’t be perplexed at the store. I take great pictures of them at happy times and send them copies, and I show them how to construct a family tree, which they always end up loving. Never mind the money, the gifts of time and skill call into being the richest marketplace in the world.”
