Top 140 Marian Keyes Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The old Chinese proverb springs to mind – No pain, no gain.”

— Marian Keyes

2. “My truth is that what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker rather than stronger, although it makes you wiser.”

— Marian Keyes

3. “Love and kindness go hand in hand.”

— Marian Keyes

4. “Relationship gurus always said that an attraction based on friendship and mutual respect was far more likely to stay the course – and the bastards were right.”

— Marian Keyes

5. “You will go on and meet someone else and I’ll just be a chapter in your tale, but for me, you were, you are and you always will be, the whole story.”

— Marian Keyes

6. “The things we dislike most in others are the characteristics we like least in ourselves.”

— Marian Keyes

7. “How to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans.”

— Marian Keyes

8. “Chick Lit uses humor to reflect life back to us. It’s a very comforting genre, and it’s the first time our generation has had a voice. It’s a very important genre for all of those reasons.”

— Marian Keyes

9. “I’m quite introverted but I’m not shy.”

— Marian Keyes

10. “I had spent my whole life feeling homesick. The only difference between the two of us was that I didn’t know what or where home was.”

— Marian Keyes

11. “When God closes one door, He slams another in your face.”

— Marian Keyes

12. “Human touch is as important as water and food and air and laughter and new shoes.”

— Marian Keyes

13. “Love is blind, there was no doubt about it. In Tara’s case it was also deaf, dumb, dyslexic, had a bad hip and the beginnings of Alzheimer’s.”

— Marian Keyes

14. “Instead of thinking, “Why me?” I think, “Why not me?”’ Extract from One Blink at a Time In.”

— Marian Keyes

15. “I like hoodies. They just make me feel safe.”

— Marian Keyes

16. “What doesn’t kill us makes us funnier.”

— Marian Keyes

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17. “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.”

— Marian Keyes

18. “Where does love go when it dies? Into flowers and other beautiful things? Back out into the universe to be recycled?”

— Marian Keyes

19. “I loved being in my own head so much, it was getting harder and harder being with other people.”

— Marian Keyes

20. “The Chinese word for “crisis” also means “opportunity.”

— Marian Keyes

21. “I’ve kind of realized life is meant to be tough and everybody is in psychic and spiritual discomfort of some sort and has a burden to carry. I’ve realized I’m not special.”

— Marian Keyes

22. “That one day you will be happy again. Your life will get better.”

— Marian Keyes

23. “I used to write in bed, starting when I woke up. I believe that creative work comes from our subconscious mind, so I try to keep the gap between sleep and writing as minimal as possible.”

— Marian Keyes

24. “Medically speaking, there is no such thing as a nervous breakdown. Which is very annoying to discover when you’re right in the middle of one.”

— Marian Keyes

25. “I knew it, I just knew it! The person who had the job of writing my life’s dialogue used to work on a very low budget soap opera.”

— Marian Keyes

26. “One day we’ll all be dead and none of this will matter.”

— Marian Keyes

27. “I wake with a thought: This is my life. I’ve only got one. I should live it the way I want.”

— Marian Keyes

28. “Waiting to be ‘better’ is the wrong approach. It’s learning to live with it.”

— Marian Keyes

29. “No more humiliation for me, thanks very much. No more swallowing my anger. Honestly, I couldn’t manage another mouthful. But it was delicious. Did you make it yourself?”

— Marian Keyes

30. “You have a magnificent moustache. You must be very proud of it.”

— Marian Keyes

31. “Desserts. I ordered banoffee pie.”

— Marian Keyes

32. “They say the path of true love never runs smooth. Well, Luke and my true love’s path didn’t run at all, it limped along in new boots that were chafing its heels. Blistered and cut, red and raw, every hopping, lopsided step, a little slice of agony.”

— Marian Keyes

33. “Fight today’s war today. Leave tomorrow’s war until tomorrow.”

— Marian Keyes

34. “I’d rather dig a ditch than go to a dinner party with people I don’t know.”

— Marian Keyes

35. “Baking makes me focus. On weighing the sugar. On sieving the flour. I find it calming and rewarding because, in fairness, it is sort of magic – you start off with all this disparate stuff, such as butter and eggs, and what you end up with is so totally different. And also delicious.”

— Marian Keyes

36. “I know of people who don’t believe it, but depression is an illness, but unlike, say, a broken leg, you don’t know when it’ll get better.”

— Marian Keyes

37. “I haven’t had Botox because my face is a bit lopsided and I depend on keeping everything animated so that people don’t notice.”

— Marian Keyes

38. “I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I’d have loved to have children.”

— Marian Keyes

39. “Sometimes things fall apart so that better things can fall together – Marilyn Monroe.”

— Marian Keyes

40. “I am prone to despair. We are all born with a particular personality. I get afraid and then I don’t want to leave the house.”

— Marian Keyes

41. “Ireland?” “Small wet place across the Irish Sea,” Barry offered kindly. “Where they drink a lot?” Lisa said faintly. “And they never stop talking. That’s the place.”

— Marian Keyes

42. “Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted make-up.”

— Marian Keyes

43. “Why do we have such a finite capacity for pleasure but an infinite one for pain?”

— Marian Keyes

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

— Marian Keyes

45. “I’ve been so showered in life, beyond my wildest dreams, such as having a loving partner I never thought I’d have.”

— Marian Keyes

46. “I’ve always been melancholic. At a party, everyone would be looking at the glittering chandeliers and I’d be looking at the waitress’s cracked shoes.”

— Marian Keyes

47. “As you know, I don’t believe in fear, just an invention by men so they get all the money and good jobs.”

— Marian Keyes

48. “I never wear flats. My shoes are so high that sometimes when I step out of them, people look around in confusion and ask, “Where’d she go?” and I have to say, “I’m down here.”

— Marian Keyes

49. “Every day I wake up afraid that I won’t be able to write, that today is the day it has left me.”

— Marian Keyes

50. “Optimism can be relearnt.”

— Marian Keyes