Mary Balogh Quotes

There is no happily-ever-after to run to. We have to work for happiness.

Have you noticed,” she asked him, “how we live much of our lives in the past and most of the rest of it in the future? Have you noticed how often the present moment slips by quiet unnoticed?

Sometimes even the imagination lets one down.

I do what I love and what I always dreamed of doing for a living. I write love stories, and I have always had a publisher willing to publish them. I have a sizable and loyal audience. I have made best-seller lists and won awards. What more could anyone ask for?

There is nothing worse, is there,” she said, “than a past that has never been fully dealt with. One can convince oneself, that it is all safely in the past and forgotten about, but the very fact that we can tell ourselves that it is forgotten proves that it is not.

I prefer to believe the opposite – that there is always an indestructible beauty at the heart of darkness.

I do believe in fate, Anne-not the blind fate that gives one no freedom of choice, but a fate that sets down a pattern for each of our lives and gives us choices, numerous choices, by which to find that pattern and be happy.

I have people introducing themselves to me: ‘I am your publicist; what can I do for you?’ But I have never learned how to use a publicist.

The bad part is life continues. The good part is that the pain goes away.

Nothing is permanently perfect. But there are perfect moments and the will to choose what will bring about more perfect moments.

I have a British voice and a rather formal one at that, having been brought up in post-WWII Britain. My voice is perfectly suited to the sort of book I write, I think. It would not fit a contemporary, besides which I do not know enough about the contemporary world to write convincingly or comfortably about it!

I fancy the romantic image of myself being soothed and inspired by music and the sweet aroma and flickering lights of candles.

Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places. What if love was not safe at all?

I wish,” he said, “I had known at eighteen what I know now – that there are some things on which one does not compromise.

I have written more than 100 novels and novellas since 1983 – I was first published in 1985. There was an overlap of three years with my teaching career, but finally I felt good enough about my writing career to quit teaching and write full time.

Love did not have to make sense. It did not have to be worthy. It did not have to be earned. It did not have to woo. It just simply was.

It’s this idea that success changes you as a person… I’ve never seen my career that way.

The real meaning of things lies deep down and the real meaning of things is always beautiful because it is simply love.

Life, she realized, so often became a determined, relentless avoidance of pain-of one’s own, of other people’s. But sometimes pain had to be acknowledged and even touched so that one could move into it and through it and past it. Or else be destroyed by it.

I can be hurt, she said, only by people I respect.

I never think that any writer can teach someone how to write.

I think I wrote ‘The Trysting Place’ in about three weeks. But it was inexperience that made me have to do that. I didn’t feel good about the book all the time I was writing it. It felt a bit like wading through molasses.

Every moment is a moment of decision, and every moment turns us inexorably in the direction of the rest of our lives.

This time her heart would not break, even though it would hurt and hurt for a long time to come. Perhaps for the rest of her life. But it would not break. She had the strength to go on alone.