Quotes from Liane Moriarty

There's a new Alice in town," said Alice. "You're not wrong about that." Nick seemed about to say something. He stopped and looked over her shoulder. "Here comes our little thug.

there is nothing more patronizing to an Infertile than to hear a new mother complaining,

there was real pain in 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

Jane walked into the playground feeling a strange sense of calm. Perhaps she needed to learn from Madeline's example. No more avoiding confrontation. March up to your critics and bloody well tell them what you think.

Her fiancé, Nico, now handled all the small-talk requirements of their relationship, chatting to chatty cab drivers and chatty aunts with ease. Christina sometimes fretted she wasn't bringing enough to the table. 'A relationship isn't a bill you split down the middle,' Nico told her. He was wrong. It was exactly like that. She'd keep an eye on it.

Even after all these years, she still said the word "gig" self-consciously, in the same way that she always said "croissant" with the proper French pronunciation, but with an apologetic, self-deprecating look to make up for her pretentiousness.

Ellen came out of the nursery from checking on Grace and said, "I love her so much it's just…" "Excruciating," supplied her mother. "I know. It doesn't really get any better. You just learn to live with it.

Why hadn't that been part of his stupid lifelong redemption program: Do what my wife asks immediately so she doesn't feel like a nag.

Back in 1998, the days were so much more spacious. When she woke up in the morning, the day rolled out in front of her like a long hallway for her to meander down, free to linger over the best parts. Days were so stingy now. Mean slivers of time. They flew by like speeding cars. Whoosh! When she was pulling back the blankets to hop into bed each night, it felt as if only seconds ago she'd been throwing them off to get up.

Your daughters will leave this school as confident, resilient young women." Ms. Byrne was off, delivering the private school party line. Resilience. What crap. No kid was going to go to school in a place that looked like freaking Buckingham Palace and come out of it resilient. She should be honest: "Your daughter will leave this school with a grand sense of entitlement that will serve her well in life; she'll find it especially useful on Sydney roads.

Please release your expectations and open yourself to all possibilities.

In case she can't get what's in her head and her heart on the canvas. Maybe she's afraid of being afraid. That she'll be so paralyzed by fear she won't do a thing, she'll just stand there with her paintbrush, feeling like a fraud.

I never believed I was going to have a baby until I heard her cry.

it was possible this was their first Delaney Christmas ever with just the six of them, because growing up they'd always had the two grandmothers at Christmas lunch, gently lobbing passive-aggressive compliments back and forth across the table.

Do you have an opinion on anything?" "Not really." It was true, in a way. Opinions were for other people. It was fascinating how upset they got about them.

This Thursday night felt like adolescence: exquisitely painful and sharply beautiful.

There was no such thing as a good divorce for children.

But she was so proud of Nick's uninhibited sociability, the way he could walk straight into a party full of people they didn't know and stick his hand out to a stranger and say, "I'm Nick. This is my wife, Alice." It was as though he had an amazing skill, like playing a complicated musical instrument, that Alice could never hope to master.

She closed her eyes and felt everyhting: the warmth of the café, the taste of the muffin, the by now familiar smell of coffee and secondhand books.

She remembered that raw sensation she'd felt after previous relationships had ended. For months afterward, it had felt like she'd lost a layer of skin. If she'd felt like that after those meaningless boys, what would she feel like after breaking with Nick? She'd been so cozy in the cocoon of their relationship. She assumed she got to stay there forever.

Apparently, moving back home was just like joining Facebook, when middle-aged boyfriends came crawling out of the woodwork like cockroaches, suggesting drinks, putting out their nasty feelers for potential affairs.

The problem is that Sophie would't want to date the sort of man who would want to date her.

It seems to make no difference that she still feels exactly the same person as when she was twenty-five, the birthdays just keep right on coming.

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