Top 36 Quotes & Sayings by Mary Kay Andrews

I wanted a garret hideaway to write in like Jo March in 'Little Women.'

I wasn't always overweight. I was a skinny little punk of a kid with severe asthma. When I got married at the age of 22, I wore a cut-down size eight wedding gown.

As soon as I started reading, I found myself drawn to fictional character's homes as much as I was to the characters themselves.

I try to start drinking water as soon as my feet hit the floor in the morning.

On my first trip to New York in the 1980s, the first place I wanted to visit was the Plaza Hotel, home to Kay Thompson's Eloise.

Between planning family vacations and running away for novel-writing retreats, I've spent much of my adult life questing for the perfect beach escape, renting cottages all along the Florida Gulf and up and down the Atlantic Coast - as far north as Nags Head, as far south as Key West.

Slipcovers are great because they can be laundered after those all-too-frequent sippy cup and red wine incidents.

We are writing fiction, but we are trying to create a world that's believable.

I want characters I can live for in a setting that makes me feel like I'm there.

The story of my holiday decorating is if Ralph Lauren was trapped in a 1950s Woolworth, this is what it would look like.

Although I married a sports-loving jock, I myself am not only not athletic, I am acutely, completely uncoordinated.

As a hopeless romantic, I'm drawn to stories of improbable beginnings.

My perfect beach town isn't a fancy resort or glitzy planned community. It's a place with a hometown grocery that has decent meat, seafood, and a deli; a couple of ice cream shops; and a handful of good restaurants - where the island-wide dress code is 'no shoes, no shirt, no problem.'

I always wanted to use my newspaper background in a novel.

I'm house obsessed, a house voyeur. Always have been.

Modern love - in the movies and music - especially country music - is full of tales of women exacting sweet revenge on the men who done them wrong.

The best way to heal a broken heart, it turns out, is to find a way to move past the hurt.

I want my fiction to seem real.

Southern women, especially upper-middle-class women, care deeply about appearances and what other people think.

My protagonists have problems that a new pair of shoes won't solve. Retail therapy is not a bad thing, but it's not going to fix their lives.

Critics will tell you the 'meet cute' is a tired old writing cliche, but the thing is, cliche's work - because they ring true with the reader.

My characters are turned upside down and trying to reinvent themselves but don't need a white knight. They can save themselves in a crisis.

Some of my most enjoyable moments as a writer have come while conjuring a meet cute.

For years, I swore I couldn't work out because my own sweat gave me a rash.

I was supposed to be working on 'The Weekenders,' but I was blocked. I got this crazy idea that I would make Christmas stockings out of blankets.

One of the things that attracts me to vintage and antique things is they have stories, and even if I don't know the stories, I make them up.

My ideal beach house has bookshelves full of paperbacks that can tolerate a little sand, a DVD library that includes some Disney classics for the little ones, board games, and jigsaw puzzles. At least one big flatscreen television is a must.

I guess because I'm a washed-up journalist, I always do a lot of research.

For a writer, capturing that elusive Christmas morning magic can be deeply problematic.

I had never thought about writing a novel. But I had two young kids, and I realized that if I could write a novel, I could work at home.

Patti Callahan Henry’s THE STORIES WE TELL is a lyrical exploration of love and longing, secrets and suspicion, family and friendship, all told with the author’s trademark insights into the hollows and curves of the heart and mind of a working woman who must balance the demands of motherhood, wifedom, sisterhood, and yes, the deepest cravings for artistic expression. I always love the stories PCH tells!

You have more issues than National Geographic by Austin LeFleur in Hissy Fit

Never, ever ask a former clergyman to say the blessing over a holiday dinner. Not if you like your dinner warm, anyway.

Technology and the internet have changed the world of publishing forever.

And that point is, it doesn't matter how long you've known somebody. People change. Or you don't really know them as well as you thought you did in the first place.

Many years ago I had two small children, and I wanted to be able to be home when they got home from school. And I didn't like the direction journalism was taking. I thought if I could write books, I could work at home and have the best of both worlds. I wrote my first mystery while still working full time, and it didn't sell, but the next one did sell, so I quit my job for the world of fiction. Scary, but I've never regretted it for a single day.