Maeve Binchy
Maeve Binchy
Maeve Binchy Snell, known as Maeve Binchy, was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, columnist, and speaker best known for her sympathetic and often humorous portrayal of small-town life in Ireland, her descriptive characters, her interest in human nature, and her often clever surprise endings. Her novels, which were translated into 37 languages, sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, and her death at age 73, announced by Vincent Browne on Irish television late on 30 July 2012, was...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth28 May 1940
CountryIreland
I live in Ireland near the sea, only one mile from where I grew up - that's good, since I've known many of my neighbours for between 50-60 years. Gordon and I play chess every day, and we are both equally bad. We play chatty, over-talkative bad bridge with friends every week.
If you're going on a plane journey, you're more likely to take one of my stories than 'Finnegan's Wake.'
I didn't think for a moment that I was better than any of these people, I was just lucky I lived in this time of mass-market paperback.
I am a big, confident, happy woman who had a loving childhood, a pleasant career, and a wonderful marriage. I feel very lucky.
I do realize that I am a popular writer who people buy to take on vacation. I'm an escapist kind of writer.
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.
I have an irregular heartbeat, so that means a fair amount of medication - and I have blood pressure pills, too, but no vitamins or supplements.
I'm mainly an airport author, and if you're trying to take your mind off the journey, you're not going to read 'King Lear.'
In my stories, whenever there's somebody wonderful and charming and bright and intelligent, that's me!
Happiness is knowing and appreciating what you've got. I am very, very, very grateful for what, to me, is dead easy.
I have great family and good friends; the stories I told became popular, and people all over the world bought them.
I've seen a lot of people buy my books and then fall asleep on the plane soon afterwards.
I'm getting better, happier, and nicer as I grow older, so I would be terrific in a couple of hundred years time.
If you don't go to a dance, you can never be rejected, but you'll never get to dance, either.