Quotes by Liane Moriarty

When someone you loved was depending on your lie, it was perfectly easy.

If her mother had been observing this interaction, shed tell Clementine she was wrong, that she needed to keep talking, to say everything that was on her mind, to communicate, to leave no possibility for misinterpretation.If her father were here, hed put his finger to his lips and say, Shh.Clementine settled for two words.Im sorry, she said.

It seemed to her everyone had too much self-protective pride to truly strip off down to their souls in front of their long-term partners. It was easier to pretend there was nothing more to know, to fall into an easygoing companionship. It was almost embarrassing to be truly intimate with your spouse; because how could you watch someone floss one minute, and the next minute share your deepest passion or tritest of fears? It was almost easier to talk about that sort of thing before you’d shared a bathroom and a bank account and argued over the packing of the dishwasher.

Polly had arrived in the world outraged to discover that her sisters had gotten there before her.

Then he kissed her so deeply and so completely that she felt like she was falling, floating, spiraling down, down, down, like Alice in Wonderland.

So now I just assume that it wont work, and that if it does work, Ill lose it anyway. This is meant to protect me, although it doesnt, because somehow the hope sneakily finds its way in. Im never aware of the hope until its gone, whooshed away like a rug pulled from under my feet, each time I hear another Im sorry.

Great. Now Renata would have even more reason to dislike her. Jane would have an enemy. The last time she had had anything close to an enemy, she was in primary school herself. It had never crossed her mind that sending your child to school would be like going back to school yourself.

Some secrets are meant to stay secret forever.

The sky looks comfortingly mundane compared to the garish kaleidoscope of the stained glass. It makes Rose yearn to be reliving any one of a thousand ordinary days spent with her ordinary older sister, who has now done this extraordinary thing and died.

As she drove the familiar route to the school, she considered her magnificent new age. Forty. She could still feel forty the way it felt when she was fifteen. Such a colorless age. Marooned in the middle of your life. Nothing would matter all that much when you were forty. You wouldnt have real feelings when you were forty, because youd be safely cushioned by your frumpy forty

They lost Olivia at Newport Beach. The panic made Alice hyperventilate. You were meant to be watching her, Nick kept saying. As if that were the point. That Alice had made a mistake. Not that Olivia was missing, but that it was Alices fault.

When you divorce someone, you divorce their whole family, Madeline had told her once.

There was something pathetic about the rejected wife bravely pulling herself together, joining a tennis club, doing a photography course, cutting her hair, venturing timidly back out onto the single scene.

Just because a marriage ended didnt mean that it hadnt been happy at times.

And even though I adore the fact that Francesca has Bens eyes, I also see now that her biological connection to us is irrelevant. She is her own little person. She is Francesca. If we werent her natural parents, we would still have loved her just as much.

All conflict can be traced back to someone’s feelings getting hurt, don’t you think?

She felt detached from all aspects of her life. She had no time anymore to feel. All that time she used to waste feeling, and analyzing her feelings, as if they were a matter of national significance.

...the terrible thought occurred to her that perhaps shed always unconsciously believed that because Sam didnt cry, he therefore didnt feel, or he felt less, not as profoundly or deeply as she did. Her focus had always been on how his actions affected her feelings, as if his role was to do things for her, to her, and all that mattered was her emotional response to him, as if a man were a product or service, and shed finally chosen the right brand to get the right response. Was it possible shed never seen or truly loved him the way he deserved to be loved? As a person? An ordinary, flawed, feeling person?

...the terrible though occurred to her that perhaps shed always unconsciously believed that because Sam didnt cry, he therefore didnt feel, or he felt less, not as profoundly or deeply as she did. Her focus had always been on how his actions affected her feelings, as if his role was to do things for her, to her, and all that mattered was her emotional response to him, as if a man were a product or service, and shed finally chosen the right brand to get the right response. Was it possible shed never seen or truly loved him the way he deserved to be loved? As a person? An ordinary, flawed, feeling person?

They would think she was savoring the taste (blueberries, cinnamon, cream-excellent), but she was actually savoring the whole morning, trying to catch it, pin it down, keep it safe before all those precious moments became yet another memory.