Quotes by Liane Moriarty

You can think something is one way all your life, and it turns out youre wrong, it can be something else entirely.

People can do what they like in the privacy of their own homes.

Not all mysteries are meant to be solved. Not all secrets are meant to be told.

You think terrible things happened on the battlefields, but terrible things happened in ordinary suburban homes.

Every marriage, every family, has its mysteries.

Women always reveal their deepest secrets to each other.

When you divorce someone, you divorce their whole family.

She felt hot liquid anger suddenly cool and harden into something powerful and immovable.

What are you babbling on about, woman? sighed Chloe. Shed picked this phrase up from her father and imitated his weary tone perfectly. Theyd made the mistake of laughing the first time she did it, so shed kept it up, and said it just often enough, and with perfect timing, so that they couldnt help but keep laughing.

Why did they all have to tread so very delicately around Celestes money? It was like wealth was an embarrassing medical condition. It was the same with Celestes beauty. Strangers gave Celeste the same furtive looks they gave to people with missing limbs, and if Madeline ever mentioned Celestes looks, Celeste responded with something like shame. Shhh, shed say, looking around fearfully in case someone overheard. Everyone wanted to be rich and beautiful, but the truly rich and beautiful had to pretend they were just the same as everyone else. Oh, it was a funny old world.

In those years when their mother disappeared into herself, and old Mrs Jeffrey next door turned into Frannie, their honorary grandmother, Alice also taught herself how to change light bulbs, fix running toilets and cook chops and veggies while Elisabeth learned how to demand refunds, pay bills, fill in forms and talk to strangers.

She was busy thinking about the concept of forgiveness. It was such a lovely, generous idea when it wasnt linked to something awful that needed forgiving.

I didnt have enough other people in my life to cover the loss of this many people at once. I didnt have spare aunties or cousins or grandparents. I didnt have backup. I didnt have insurance to cover a loss like this.

Only a man could come up with something so ruthless, so essentially stupid and yet brutally effective.

As seductive as it might have been to erase the grief and pain of the last ten years, it was also a lie. Young Alice was a fool. A sweet, innocent fool. Young Alice hadnt experienced ten years of living.

I remember thinking about how mothers were prepared to run into burning buildings to save their childrens lives. I thought I should be able to go through a bit more suffering, a bit more inconvenience to give my children life. It made me feel noble. But now I realize Im a crazy woman running into a burning house for children who dont exist.

Life was all about consequences

She wanted to hug him and at the same time she kind of wanted to slap him.

If parents had children who were good sleepers, they assumed this was due to their good parenting, not good luck. They followed the rules, and the rules had been proven to work. Celeste must therefore not be following the rules. And you could never prove it to them! They would die smug in their beds.

Helicopter parents. Before I started at Pirriwee Public, I thought it was an exaggeration, this thing about parents being overly involved with their kids. I mean, my mum and dad loved me, they were, like, interested in me when I was growing up in the nineties, but they werent, like, obsessed with me.