Liane Quotes

Sadness puts my heart in a prison. ~ Liane Holliday Willey

She wondered if she was going mad. It felt like a decision she could make. One small step over an invisible line and she could choose lunacy. ~ Liane Moriarty

It was just so very surprising that the good-looking, worried man who had just offered her a cup of tea, and was right now working at his computer down the hallway, and who would come running if she called him, and who loved her with all of his strange heart, would in all probability one day kill her. ~ Liane Moriarty

When will it all be over? When will she have time to think and feel again? Presumably not till the baby is a teenager and can safely fend for himself. Although, of course, teenagers need to be taught to drive and say no to drugs and wear condoms. ~ Liane Moriarty

Her darling little tech-savvy, consumerist savages. ~ Liane Moriarty

Excuse me?' A beaming female face swims into focus. A woman has touched her on the arm and Grace is disconcerted, as though someone on television waved at her. She feels so remote from the world, from normal people, she thought she was invisible. ~ Liane Moriarty

If the counselor ever wrote a book about her experience as a marriage counselor she would probably mention it: I once had a patient who treated his car more tenderly than he treated his wife. (No need to mention the car was a Lamborghini, otherwise all the male readers would say, "Oh, well, then.") ~ Liane Moriarty

Back then he was thinking with his dick. ~ Liane Moriarty

Why did people feel the need to comment on the rain, when they had absolutely nothing of value to add to the conversation? ~ Liane Moriarty

If anyone uses the words 'marvelous imagery' or 'narrative arc,' slap them for me. ~ Liane Moriarty

I was just average, I'm afraid. Too dreamy. After school, ~ Liane Moriarty

I can't imagine us as sweet little old ladies.' 'It does seem unlikely. ~ Liane Moriarty

She was remembering what it was like when you broke up with someone. Conversations became so hopelessly tangled. You had to be polite and precise. You couldn't safely criticize anymore, because you didn't have the right. You'd lost your immunity. ~ Liane Moriarty

It gave me a shock. A sudden shock of indescribable pain, like when you're a kid, and you're hit on the nose with a basketball on a cold morning, and you cannot believe how much it hurts, and your friends all laugh and you want your mother so bad. ~ Liane Moriarty

A woman wants to be adored but she doesn't want reverence. Thomas ~ Liane Moriarty

She couldn't shake the feeling that if she didn't record this moment on her phone then it wasn't really happening, it didn't count ~ Liane Moriarty

You've been here before. It won't kill you. It feels like you can't breathe, but you actually are breathing. It feels like you'll never stop crying, but you actually will. ~ Liane Moriarty

(Why did she think tall people couldn't be crazy? Because they looked like they ruled the world? ~ Liane Moriarty

Ben told me that Tom had just spoken on the mobile to Alice and according to Tom she didn't say anything about falling over at the gym and she sounded "Just like Mum except maybe ten to fifteen percent grumpier than usual." I think he's learning percentages at school right now. ~ Liane Moriarty

All conflict can be traced back to someone's feelings getting hurt, don't you think? ~ Liane Moriarty

missions. A moment later she heard the sound of the television start up. The clever little thing had worked out how to use the remote control. 'Not till August,' said Lauren. 'We've got lots to sort out. Visas and so on. We'll have to find an apartment, a nanny for Jacob.' A nanny for Jacob. 'Job for me.' Rob sounded a little nervous. 'Oh, yes, darling,' said Rachel. She did try to take her son seriously. She really did. 'A job for you. In real estate, do you think?' 'Not sure yet,' said Rob. 'We'll have to see. I might end up being a house husband.' 'So sorry I never taught him how to cook,' said Rachel to Lauren, not especially sorry. Rachel had never been much interested in cooking or that good at it; it was just another chore that had to be done, like the laundry. The way people went on these days about cooking. 'That's okay,' beamed Lauren. 'We'll probably eat out a lot in New York. The city that never sleeps, ~ Liane Moriarty

Just before she was about to hit send she deleted the kisses. In case the therapist thought she was leading him on. Then she thought of all the actual kissing they'd done last night. Ridiculous. She may just as well kiss him in a text message. She made it three kisses and went to hit send, but then she wondered if it would seem overly romantic, and changed it back to one kiss, but that seemed stingy, compared to his two, as if he was trying to make a point She made a 'tch' sounded, added back in the second kiss and hit send. ~ Liane Moriarty

It had never crossed her mind that sending your child to school would be like going back to school yourself. ~ Liane Moriarty

She was a far better mother when she had an audience. ~ Liane Moriarty

An enemy, perhaps. Ah, so simple. Liane will kill you ten men. Two steps forward, thrust - thus!" He lunged. "And souls go thrilling up like bubbles in a beaker of mead. ~ Jack Vance

Women are like the Olympic athletes of grudges. ~ Liane Moriarty

Desolate' was the most perfectly beautiful word for how she felt. Sometimes ~ Liane Moriarty

The suffragettes didn't starve themselves for the vote, so that you girls could starve yourselves for a man. ~ Liane Moriarty

Nathan was pretending to be Ed. He was pretending to be a good man, and everyone was falling for it. "Sure ~ Liane Moriarty

She has that euphoric feeling you get at the airport after you've checked in your luggage. Nothing can stop your journey. ~ Liane Moriarty

A thank-you card," repeated Alice. "Yes. I know, I know, it's teaching them good manners and everything, but I sort of hate those thank-you cards. I always imagine the kids groaning and having to be forced into writing them. It makes me feel like an elderly aunt. ~ Liane Moriarty

Your inferiority was right there on display for the world to see. ~ Liane Moriarty

The front of the cafe was all open glass, and the seating was arranged so that wherever you sat you faced the beach, as if you were there to watch the sea perform a show. As Jane looked around her, she felt that dissatisfied feeling she often experienced when she was somewhere new and lovely. She couldn't quite articulate it except with the words "If only I were here". This little beachside cafe was so exquisite, she longed to really be there
except, of course, she was there, so it didn't make any sense. ~ Liane Moriarty

How horrible it was to be despised. To feel yourself to be despicable. ~ Liane Moriarty

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

There would be no point asking Sarah because she was incapable of making a decision. If Cecilia asked her if she wanted tea or coffee, she would sit for a full minute, her forehead furrowed as she agonized over the pros and cons of each beverage, before finally saying, "Coffee! No, wait, tea!" A decision like this one would give her a seizure. ~ Liane Moriarty

This was the thing with the murky world of the Internet. You swam along through cyberspace, merrily picking up this and that, and next thing you knew you'd stumbled upon something unsavory and ugly. ~ Liane Moriarty

It was extraordinary how tumultuous historical moments could be replayed right here in this ordinary little moment as she drove down the Pacific Highway ~ Liane Moriarty

help" screamed silently in her head, as if she were begging for something: a solution, a cure, a reprieve. A reprieve from what? A cure for what? A solution for what? Her breathing had become shallow. She'd felt beads of sweat at her hairline. Then she'd seen the sign. Their lease at their Newtown apartment was up. The two-bedroom unit was in an ugly, ~ Liane Moriarty

I see lots of differences between Australians and Americans - but as mothers, I think we're pretty much alike! ~ Liane Moriarty

Everyone wanted to be rich and beautiful, but the truly rich and beautiful had to pretend they were just the same as everyone else. ~ Liane Moriarty

Poor, poor Pandora. Zeus sends her off to marry Epimetheus, a not especially bright man she's never even met, along with a mysterious covered jar. Nobody tells Pandora a word about the jar. Nobody tells her not to open the jar. Naturally, she opens the jar. What else has she got to do? How was she to know that all those dreadful ills would go whooshing out to plague mankind forevermore, and that the only thing left in the jar would be hope? ~ Liane Moriarty

It was the Easter Hat Parade, and the St. Angela's mothers were out in force, dressed up in honor of Easter and the first truly autumnal day of the new season. Soft, pretty scarves looped necks, skinny jeans encased skinny and not-so-skinny thighs, spike-heeled boots tapped across the playground. It had been a humid summer, and the crispness of the breeze and the anticipation of a four-day, chocolate-filled weekend had put everyone in good moods. The mothers, sitting in a big double-rowed circle of blue fold-up chairs around the quadrangle, were frisky and high-spirited. The older children who weren't taking part in the Easter ~ Liane Moriarty

Clementine learned to feel bad about her white middle-class privilege long before it became fashionable. ~ Liane Moriarty

Nick explained that an aperitif was an pre-dinner drink. Nick came from an aperitif-drinking family. Alice came from a family with one dusty bottle of Baileys sitting hopefully in the back of the pantry with the tins of spaghetti. ~ Liane Moriarty

Aunt Connie killing the Munros is manifestly wrong. It was Alice. ~ Liane Moriarty

It's always the paragraphs I loved most, the ones I tenderly polished and re-read with pride, that my editor will suggest cutting. ~ Liane Moriarty

Bonnie and her mum are both members of Amnesty International," said Abigail.
"Of course they are," murmured Madeline. This must be how Jennifer Aniston feels, thought Madeline, whenever she hears about Angelina and Brad adopting another orphan or two. ~ Liane Moriarty

The time there was only the one warm-up room for everyone, a room so astonishingly hot and airless and noisy, so crowded with extraordinarily talented-seeming musicians, that everything had begun to spin like a merry-go-round, and a French cellist had reached out a languid hand to save Clementine's cello as it slipped from her grasp. (She was a champion fainter.) The ~ Liane Moriarty

It was unfortunate the way adults had to repress their true feelings. ~ Liane Moriarty

If I could, I would ask the world to make me skates so that I could find its frozen water and set myself free to smile, laugh, dance and cheer.

I'd see the boundaries that would be in a world frozen in its place and they would keep me safe, away from where the waters warm, away from the stares, away from the thoughts that melt and tear.

I would ask the world to skate with me, looking at the gladness I had found, knowing, really knowing, there was nothing left to fear.

I think then we would be free to live life as we could, with more in common than apart, the fog would lift, the confusion would end and true understanding would hold us dear. ~ Liane Holliday Willey

Third child in that suburban dream of his, now at the front ~ Liane Moriarty

I'm having a nervous breakdown, she thought with relief. I'm about to lose my mind, and that's just as well, because this cannot possibly be fixed. It is simply not fixable. ~ Liane Moriarty

She grabbed a towel from the rail and wrapped it around him, lifting him straight out of the bath, kicking and screaming. She carried him into his bedroom and laid him with elaborate care on the bed because she was terrified she might throw him against the wall. ~ Liane Moriarty

She had no idea of her weight and no interest in learning it. She knew she could be thinner, and of course when she was younger she was indeed much thinner, but she was generally happy with her body as long as it wasn't giving her pain, and bored by all the different ways women droned on about the subject of weight, as if it were one of the great mysteries of life. The recent weight-losers, evangelical about whatever method had worked for them, the thin women who called themselves fat, the average women who called themselves obese, the ones desperate for her to join in their lavish self-loathing. "Oh, Frances, isn't it just so depressing when you see young, thin girls like that!" "Not especially," Frances would say, adding extra butter to her bread roll. ~ Liane Moriarty

How could she not be with someone who shared such a major chunk of her life? ~ Liane Moriarty

Bonnie had arranged for the whole family to volunteer at a homeless shelter on Christmas morning. "I just hate all that crass commercialism of Christmas, don't you?" she'd told Madeline last week, when they'd run into each other in the shops. Madeline had been doing Christmas shopping, and her wrists were looped with dozens of plastic shopping bags. Fred and Chloe were both eating lollipops, their lips a garish red. Meanwhile Bonnie was carrying a tiny bonsai tree in a pot, and Skye was walking along next to her eating a pear. ("A fucking pear," Madeline had told Celeste later. For some reason she couldn't get over the pear.) ~ Liane Moriarty

No. I love my grudges. I tend to them like little pets.

Madeline ~ Liane Moriarty

You're like a favorite pillow. I have to pack you wherever I go. ~ Liane Moriarty

Their friends had got so old that whenever Connie bought a get-well card she also bought a sympathy card at the same time, to save herself the trouble of going back to the newsagent when they didn't 'get well'. ~ Liane Moriarty

But the memory stayed, clinging to the walls of her mind like a slimy black leech. ~ Liane Moriarty

The world, right this very moment people were suffering unimaginable atrocities and you couldn't close your heart completely, but you couldn't leave it wide open either, because otherwise how could you possibly live your life, when through pure, random luck you got to live in paradise? You had to register the existence of evil, do the little that you could, and then close your mind and think about new shoes. ~ Liane Moriarty

Nobody ever told you that being a mother is all about making what seemed like thousands of tiny decisions. ~ Liane Moriarty

She found it soothing to get caught up in a brightly colored, plastic world where all that mattered was how much you ate and exercised, where pain and anguish were suffered over no greater tragedy than push-ups, where people spoke intensely about calories and sobbed joyfully over lost kilos. And then they all lived happily, skinnily ever after. ~ Liane Moriarty

in times of crisis a person's face is somehow stripped back to something essential and universally human: all those labels like "beautiful," "sexy," "plain" became irrelevant. ~ Liane Moriarty

They say it's good to let your grudges go, but I don't know, I'm quite fond of my grudge. I tend it like a little pet. ~ Liane Moriarty

She tried to work out who she really was without people who loved her to reflect back her personality. ~ Liane Moriarty

But then there were the other times, unexpected quiet moments, where they'd catch each other's eyes, and all the years of hurt and joy, bad times and good times, seemed to fuse into a feeling that she knew was so much stronger, more complex and real, than of those fledgling feelings for Dominick, or even the love she'd first felt for Nick in those early years. ~ Liane Moriarty

Some secrets are meant to stay secret forever. ~ Liane Moriarty

They both went to opposite sides of the bed, snapped on their bedside lamps and pulled back the cover in a smooth, practiced, synchronized move that proved, depending on Madeline's mood, that they either had the perfect marriage or that they were stuck in a middle-class suburban rut and they needed to sell the house and go traveling around India. ~ Liane Moriarty

How strange it all was. Wouldn't it be a lot less messy if everyone just stayed with the people they married in the first place? ~ Liane Moriarty

Cecelia turned her gaze away from the girls and looked at the shimmer blue of their kidney shaped swimming pool, with its powerful underwater light, the perfect symbol of suburban bliss, except for that strange intermit sound like a baby choking that was coming from the pool filter. ~ Liane Moriarty

Why did they all have to tread so very delicately around Celeste's money? It was like wealth was an embarrassing medical condition. It was the same with Celeste's beauty. Strangers gave Celeste the same furtive looks they gave to people with missing limbs, and if Madeline ever mentioned Celeste's looks, Celeste responded with something like shame. "Shhh," she'd 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. ~ Liane Moriarty

The other mothers, the teachers, the people. I didn't realize that having a child was so social. You're always talking to people. ~ Liane Moriarty

Everyone seemed to be deliberately not looking at her, the way people did when you had food in your teeth and they didn't want to tell you, so they kept trying not to see. ~ Liane Moriarty

The wonderful thing about Marla was that she understood Rachel's desire to talk endlessly about the sort of adult that Janie might have become, to wonder how many children she would have had and the sort of man she would have married. It kept her alive, for just those few moments. Ed had hated those hypothetical conversations so much, he'd leave the room. He couldn't understand Rachel's need to wonder what could have been, rather than just accepting that it never would be. ~ Liane Moriarty

Or maybe temporary insanity is just an excuse for inexcusable behavior. ~ Liane Moriarty

She wanted to see it clearly, to understand that it wasn't all black, or all white. It was a million colors. And ~ Liane Moriarty

Afterward she felt seedy and sexy and disheveled and filled with despair. ~ Liane Moriarty

Bleh," she said out loud. ~ Liane Moriarty

She didn't understand a damned thing about life except that it was arbitrary and cruel, and some people got away with murder while others made one tiny, careless mistake and paid a terrible price. ~ Liane Moriarty

When she had first held Jacob in her arms and pressed her lips to his tender, fragile scalp, it had felt as though she were being brought back to life, like a wilting plant being watered. ~ Liane Moriarty

She'd been lacking in so much confidence when she was a teenager, worrying all the time about what people thought of her and how they might hurt her, without even considering the impact she might have on their feelings. ~ Liane Moriarty

For a moment Tess felt her strange, inappropriate happiness teeter. It was as though she were balanced on a narrow crevice surrounded by chasms of grief. One wrong thought and down she'd tumble. ~ Liane Moriarty

Bonnie is so 'calm,' you see. The opposite of me. She speaks in one of those soft . . . low . . . melodious voices that make you want to punch a wall. ~ Liane Moriarty

Today would be perfect in every way. The Facebook photos wouldn't lie. So much joy. Her life had so much so joy. That was an actual verifiable fact. ~ Liane Moriarty

I can't be in the same room as you right now." She hopped out of bed, taking the iPad with her. "Be ridiculous, then," said Ed. ~ Liane Moriarty

I'll tell you something, something important. Write this down. You ready?' 'Yes, yes, I'm ready.' 'Love is a decision.' 'Love is a decision?' 'That's right. A decision. Not a feeling. That's what you young people don't realise. ~ Liane Moriarty

However, at the end of the night I saw Nick stomping out to the car park, obviously in a terrible mood. They take their lives so seriously, these young people. "Just appreciate the fact that you can stomp so energetically," I wanted to say to him. I'd pay a million dollars to be Alice and Elisabeth's age again for just one day. I'd dance like Olivia's butterfly and bite into crisp green apples and run across hot sand into the surf, and I'd walk, as far as I wanted, wherever I wanted, in big loping, leaping strides, with my head held high and my lungs filling with air. ~ Liane Moriarty

Cecilia never felt comfortable around Rachel. She felt trivial, because surely the whole world was trivial to a woman who had lost a child in such circumstances. She always wanted to somehow convey to Rachel that she knew she was trivial. Any time Cecilia imagined losing one of her daughters, a silent, primal scream would get trapped in her throat. If she couldn't stand imagining it, how could Rachel actually live it? "Time heals," Cecilia's mother-in-law intoned whenever the subject of Rachel's grief had come up, as if sharing a job with Rachel qualified her as an expert, and Cecilia had thought, I bet it doesn't. ~ Liane Moriarty

First kisses didn't necessarily require darkness and alcohol, they could happen in the open air, with the sun warm on your face and everything around you honest and real and true. ~ Liane Moriarty

It wasn't logical, but the better you knew someone, the more blurry they became. The accumulation of facts made them disappear. It was more interesting wondering if someone did or didn't like country music than knowing one way or the other. ~ Liane Moriarty

it," finished Susi. "It's almost worth it." Celeste met Susi's raccoon eyes. "Yes." The blandness of Susi's gaze said nothing at all except, Got it. She wasn't being kind and maternal, and she wasn't reveling in the delicious superiority ~ Liane Moriarty

If she packaged the perfect Facebook life, maybe she would start to believe it herself. ~ Liane Moriarty

Ellen had always assumed she would marry young and have a relationship like theirs. She thought she was that sort of person. Traditional. Nice. As if nice girls always found nice boys. As if "niceness" was all that was necessary to maintain a relationship. ~ Liane Moriarty

You never changed your appearance for men. You changed it for other women. Because they were the ones carefully tracking each others weight and skin tone along with their own. They were the ones trapped with you on the ridiculous appearance obsession merry go round that they couldn't or wouldn't get off. ~ Liane Moriarty

I had bad endometriosis when I was younger, and a doctor told me I'd have a lot of trouble getting pregnant. ~ Liane Moriarty

Stick with the nice boys ... bad boys don't bring you coffee in bed, I'll tell you that for free. ~ Liane Moriarty

Seven minutes. Her mistake could be measured in minutes. Marla was the only person who knew. Ed never knew. ~ Liane Moriarty

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. ~ Liane Moriarty