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 am not a member of Fat Liberation, nor do I think that obesity is healthy. But I do believe that in many ways my life has been a more charmed and happy one because I was always large.
Nobody is ordinary if you know where to look.
Of course I wanted children. Bright, gorgeous, loving children. I could almost see them.
I once got a huge, expensive flower arrangement from a person I didn't like, who sent it out of pure guilt. It had a hideous bird-of-paradise in the middle, and I thought it would never fade and die. I hated it.
If I see Marian Keyes' books or Patricia Scanlan's books given more prominence than mine in the bookstore, I'll move mine to the front. I've told them I do this, and they've confessed to doing the same thing to me.
I think you've got to play the hand that you're dealt and stop wishing for another hand.
I'm a great will maker. I've made my will every year since I was 21.
I think I'm brave because I've made decisions based - I hope not entirely selfishly - on what I think is right for me to do next.
It was so silly to try to define things by words. What did one person mean by infatuation or obsession and another mean by love. The whole thing couldn't be tidied away with neat little labels." - Lena Gray
Everybody is a hero in their own story if you just look.
All I ever wanted to do is to write stories that people will enjoy and feel at home with.
I've been very lucky and I have a happy old age with good family and friends still around.
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.
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.