Quotes from Liane Moriarty

There was nothing wrong with the color. He'd call back the next day and say it was fine. He'd just needed to feel powerful for a few minutes. One of the younger hotshots had just made him feel inferior in a meeting.

It was extraordinary the way her body knew how to do things—the mobile phone, the makeup, the lock—without her mind remembering her ever having done them before.

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

It was something to do with her sense of always feeling separate from everybody else, as if things that worried them couldn't possibly worry her, as if she were immune from the ordinariness of life.

Their carefully relaxed demeanors hid a fragile defensiveness, as if they expected to be criticized at any moment and they weren't going to stand for it. They both seemed to cling so hard to their chosen personalities. I am this sort of person and therefore I believe this, I think this, I do this and I am right, I'm right, I'm sure I'm right!

That's what's important these days, isn't it. Everything should be fun and lighthearted.

One minute they were driving her home from the hospital, a tiny, wrinkled, squalling baby. The next she was all legs and cheekbones and opinions. Whoosh. It made Alice's head spin.

anything to do with their lives? "You and Nick are in the middle of a custody battle," said Elisabeth. "It's really serious." Custody battle. It sounded like "custardy" battle. Alice imagined herself and Nick flinging spoonfuls of sweet yellow custard at each other, laughing and shrieking and licking it off afterward.

Hooray!" said her mother. "I'm so glad you've lost your memory. This accident is going to turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

Nick explained that an aperitif was a predinner 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 behind the tins of spaghetti.

sometimes you had to be brave enough to "point your life in a new direction.

For the first time ever, she saw her mother as just a girl: a girl like her who made mistakes, who screwed things up, who was just making it

For the first time ever, she saw her mother as just a girl: a girl like her who made mistakes, who screwed things up, who was just making it all up as she went along.

every obstacle yields to stern resolve.

Sometimes it was exhilaratingly easy to be happy again. Other times they found that they did have to "try".

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. "So, school politics, girls," Madeline said as she carefully

Sometimes she felt like she was always dragging the memories of these relationships along with her, like three old tin cans on a string.

She thought everyone had friends who felt like obligations.

now her voice was loud and clear. "This can happen to anyone.

Oh, that feeling of hopeless grief and just wanting the pain to stop.

She would never again lie in bed on a Good Friday morning and relax in the blissful knowledge that there was nothing to do and nowhere to be, because for the rest of her life, there would always, always be something left undone. An unmade confession. An ugly secret.

You're different from other agency people," one client told her at the end of their first meeting, as he shook her hand to seal the deal. "You actually listen more than you talk.

What was the actual benefit of accuracy when it came to memories?

After we left the hospital this afternoon, Mum and I went over to Alice's place to meet Ben and the kids. We all had pizza for dinner. (Thankfully Roger had a Rotary meeting; I was not in the mood for Roger. I can't think of anyone ever being in the mood for Roger, except for Mum, presumably, and Roger, of course.) We didn't tell the children that Alice had lost her memory. We just said she'd hit her head at the gym but she was going to be fine.