Quotes by Liane Moriarty

We were so happy.

She quite liked this aspect of her personality, the way her mood could change from melancholy to euphoric because of a breeze or a flavor or a beautiful chord progression. It meant she never had to feel too down about feeling down.

Baths, she thought, were just like her relationships, all ooh, ah in the beginning and then suddenly, without warning, she had to get out, out, out!

It was strange, because she always felt that she hid herself from Erika, that she was more herself with her true friends, where the friendship flowed in an ordinary, uncomplicated, grown-up fashion (emails, phone calls, drinks, dinners, banter and jokes that everyone got), but right now it felt like none of those friends knew her the raw, ugly, childish, basic way that Erika did.

Toxic was actually an accurate description of the feelings Clementine had so often felt in Erikas presence: the intense aggravation she had to work so hard to resist and conceal, the disappointment with herself, because Erika wasnt evil or cruel or stupid, she was simply annoying, and Clementines response to her annoyingness was so completely disporportionate, it embarassed and confounded her. Erika loved Clementine. Shed do anything for her. So why did she inflame Clementine so? It was like she was allergic to her.

One of the multitudes of exboyfriends had been a country music fan and left Gemma with an unfortunate passion for Tammy Wynette. It was like, Cat thought, he’d given her herpes.

Somehow she knew there would be an unspoken truce on their unspoken battle over God knew what when they were old. They could both surrender to their innate grumpiness. It was going to be a lovely relief.

Its because we live in a beauty-obsessed society where the most important thing a woman can do is make herself attractive to men.

If someone had asked him about his dreams on the morning of the barbecue, he would have said that he didnt want for much, but he wouldnt mind a lower mortgage, a tidier house, another baby - ideally a son, but hed take another girl no problem at all - a big motherfucking boat if it were up for grabs, and more sex. He would have laughed about the sex. Or smiled at least. A rueful smile. Maybe the smile would have been exactly halfway between rueful and bitter.

And maybe it was more than that.Maybe it was actually an unspoken instant agreement between the four women on the balcony: No woman should pay for the accidental death of this particular man. Maybe it was an involuntary, atavistic response to thousands of years of violence against women. Maybe it was for every rape, every brutal backhanded slap, every other Perry that had come before this one.

Something snapped, said Madeline. She saw Perrys hand shining back in its graceful, practiced arc. She heard Bonnies guttural voice. It occurred to her that there were so many levels of evil in the world. Small evils like her own malicious words. Like not inviting a child to a party. Bigger evils like walking out on your wife and newborn baby or sleeping with your childs nanny. And then there was the sort of evil which Madeline had no experience: cruelty in hotel rooms and violence in suburban homes and little girls sold like merchandise, shattering innocent hearts.

Sometimes there was the pure, primal pain of grief, and other times there was anger, the frantic desire to claw and hit and kill, and sometimes, like right now, ther was just ordinary, dull sadness, settling itself softly, suffocatingly over her like a heave fog.She was just so damned sad.

You okay, Mum? said Rob.Im fine, said Rachel. She went to reach for her cup of coffee and found that she didnt have the energy to even lift her arm.

Its about making a choice to make your marriage a priority, to, kind of, put that at the top of the page, as your mission statement or something.

He knew how the audition was going to affect their lives for the next ten weeks as she slowly lost her mind from nerves and the strain of trying to scrounge precious practice time from an already jam-packed life. No matter how much time poor Sam gave her, it would never be quite enough, because what she actually needed was for him and the kids to just temporarily not exist. She needed to slip into another dimension where she was a single, childless person. Just between now and the audition. She needed to go to a mountain chalet (somewhere with good acoustics) and live and breathe nothing but music. Go for walks. Meditate. Eat well. Do all those positive-visualization exercises young musicians did these days. She had an awful suspicion that if she were to do this in reality, she might not even miss Sam and the children that much, or if she did miss them, it would be quite bearable.

She meant that theyd never used words like separation and divorce even in their worst screaming matches. They yelled things like, Youre infuriating! You dont think! You are the most annoying woman in the history of annoying women! I hate you! I hate you more! and they always, always used the word always, even though Clementines mother had said you should never use that word in an argument with your spouse, as in, for example, You always forget to refill the water jug! (But Sam did always forget. It was accurate.)

This was historical revisionism at its best, and hadnt Sam always specialized in that, hadnt she always said she wished she had a permanent film rolling of their life so she could go back and prove that, yes, he did so say that thing he now denied?

If he could just have one more chance, hed act like the man hed always believed himself to be.

Why hadnt that been part of his stupid lifelong redemption program: Do what my wife asks immediately so she doesnt feel like a nag.

Nothing is rigid. Things change. You can change your mind. You can change your thinking.