The Mystery of Mercy Close Quotes

“People get sick and sometimes they get better and sometimes they don't. And it doesn't matter if the sickness is cancer or if it's depression. Sometimes the drugs work and sometimes they don't. Sometimes the drugs work for a while and then they stop. Sometimes the alternative stuff works and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes you wonder if no outside interference makes any difference at all; if an illness is like a storm, if it simply has to run its course and, at the end of it, depending on how robust you are, you will be alive. Or you will be dead.”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close

“Waiting to be 'better' is the wrong approach. It's learning to live with it.”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close

“Two and a half years ago I’d learned to stop wanting comfort from the people around me, because they couldn’t give it. We were all too scared. I was terrified and so were they. No one could understand what was happening to me, and when they couldn’t make me better they felt helpless and guilty and eventually resentful. Yes, they loved me, my head knew that even if my heart couldn’t feel it, but there was a small part of them that was angry. As if it was my choice to become depressed and that I was deliberately resisting the medication that was meant to fix me.”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close

“The ability to talk to other people seemed to be leaking out of me like air out of an old balloon.”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close

“He'd done his walls with paint from Holy Basil. God, I yearned for their colors. I hadn't been able to afford them myself but I knew their color chart like the back of my hand. His hall was done in Gangrene, his stairs in Agony and his living room--unless I was very much mistaken--in Dead Whale. Colors I personally very much approved of.”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close

“People don't tend to employ me. I'm the wrong personality type. Or rather, people do tend to employ me for a short time and then they sack me. A film broker once told me, as she terminated my contract, that I have a misleading sort of face.

"You're pretty", she complained. "Your features are symmetrical and there was an article in Grazia that says human beings are programmed to find those with symmetrical features more pleasing to they eye. So this isn't my fault, I was simply responding to a biological imperative. You've even teeth, so when you smile, you look...sweet, I suppose. But you're not, are you?"

"I hope not," I said.

"You see, there you go again. You're a smart-arse and you've no ability to filter your thoughts---"

"And my thoughts are often abrasive."

"Exactly."

"I'll just get my brushes and sponges and leave."

"If you would.”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close

“I need you to get inside Wayne's head. I need someone who thinks a bit left field and in your own unpleasant way, Helen Walsh, you're a genius.

He had a point. I'm lazy and illogical. I've limited people skills. I'm easily bored and easily irritated. But I have moments of brilliance. They come and they go and I can't depend on them but they do happen.”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close

“Before I knocked the antidepressant back, I had a little word with it. Work, I urged. Take away this awful, awful feeling.”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close

“Back at my parents’, Mum was waiting with a muffin for me. ‘Banana and pecan. I know it’s the wrong colour but would you try it? Are you okay?’ she asked. ‘You look a bit …’
‘Grand,’ I said. ‘It’s just the clouds. When it’s overcast like this, it does my head in.’
A strange expression passed over her face. ‘The sky is blue.’
I took a look out of the window; the sky was blue. ‘When did that happen?’
‘It’s been blue all morning.’
But it didn’t make things any better. I was still uneasy, just in a different way. The empty sky looked hard and cold and merciless. Couldn’t they have put in some clouds to soften it up a bit?”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close

“Are you close to your family?'

I considered it. 'Close' was one way of putting it. 'We're close,' I said cautiously. 'But we're very mean to each other. This morning I told my mum that if she didn't stop acting old I was going to lobby for a law on euthanasia, so a bus would come round every Monday morning and take away all the old people who complained that they couldn't hear the telly or see the buttons on their mobile phone or that they had a pain in their hip, and put a bullet in their heads. But we're close.”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close

“You have the look of someone who’ll die under general anaesthetic while having liposuction.”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close

“I have a habit of taking instant dislikes to people. Simply because it saves time.”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close

“Unless it was an elaborate double-bluff on Wayne’s part and it was so obvious as to be not obvious at all … Christ, it was too early in the morning for this sort of mental gymnastics.”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close

“(Which”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close

“Mum insists on calling Sat Nav "the Talking Map," like she's a medieval peasant who believes in witchcraft.”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close

“Is it not strange,’ she said, ‘that a little cruelty makes them love me all the more?”
― Marian Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close

“Why would we ‘swing’ when we had praying?”
― Marian Keyes, Mammy Walsh's A-Z of the Walsh Family