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'm pleased to have outsold great writers. But I'm not insane - I realize I am a writer people buy to take on vacation.
I have been luckier than anyone I know or even heard of. I had a very happy childhood, a good education, I enjoyed working as a teacher, journalist and author. I have loved a wonderful man for over 33 years, and I believe he loves me, too.
I have been lucky enough to travel a lot, meet great people in many lands. I have liked almost everyone I met along the way.
We have to make our own happiness, and we have to make our own decisions and play the hand that is dealt to us.
I believed that old people never laughed. I thought they sighed a lot and groaned. They walked with sticks, and they didn't like children on bicycles or roller skates or with big dogs.
Success is not like a cake that needs to be divided. It's more like a heap of stones - a cairn. If someone is successful, they add a stone to the cairn. It gets very high and can be seen from all over the world. That's how I see it.
I'm getting better, happier, and nicer as I grow older, so I would be terrific in a couple of hundred years time.
I have great family and good friends; the stories I told became popular, and people all over the world bought them.
In my stories, whenever there's somebody wonderful and charming and bright and intelligent, that's me!
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.'
I'm a great will maker. I've made my will every year since I was 21.
If you don't go to a dance, you can never be rejected, but you'll never get to dance, either.
My father went to work by train every day. It was half an hour's journey each way, and he would read a paperback in four journeys. After supper, we all sat down to read - it was long before TV, remember!
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.