Quotes from Liane Moriarty

she was trying to be the perfect mother-in-law, but really, when you didn't let a woman help, it was a way of keeping her at a distance, of letting her know that she wasn't family, of saying I don't like you enough to let you into my kitchen.

Tess had seen exactly how Will had managed to keep this thing with Felicity a secret for so long. Family life, even with just one little boy, had its own familiar rhythms, and it was perfectly possible to keep right on dancing like you always have, even when your mind is somewhere else.

She dared to look up and the stars were a million darting eyes on the lookout for rule-breaking in her story: sexism, ageism, racism, tokenism, ableism, plagiarism, cultural appropriation, fat-shaming, body-shaming, slut-shaming, vegetarian-shaming, real-estate-agent-shaming. The voice of the Almighty Internet boomed from the sky: Shame on you!

It was stupid to feel hurt that he had not told her he was going out, because this was the way they were living right now, but still her heart felt newly hurt, as tender and soft as bruised fruit.

maybe wishes do come true because this is family, this is what she never had, never knew, never dreamed, this is a moment so perfect and funny and this is her life now, just a string of perfect, funny moments one after the other, like a string of beads that will go on forever.

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

Idiopathic Craniofacial Erythema', or 'severe facial blushing'.

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

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 café was so exquisite, she longed to be really there -- except, of course, she was there, so it didn't make sense.

Sorry for swearing. Kindergarten teachers shouldn't swear. I never swear in front of the children. Just in case you're thinking of making an official complaint." "You're off duty," said Jane. "You can say what you want.

Jane felt that strange lurch she sometimes experienced when she got distracted by her life, and then something (it was often Ziggy) made her remember just in time the appropriate way for a nice, ordinary, well-mannered grown-up to behave.

It was a strain being with someone so good-looking and smart and funny and nice. She was dazzled by John-Paul. Connor was dazzled by her. And it was more fun doing the dazzling. Girls were meant to do the dazzling.

She looked straight ahead at the briskly working windshield wipers. The windshield was just like the never-ending cycles of her mind. Confusion. Clear. Confusion. Clear. Confusion. Clear.

I don't want any more children," said Carmel. "I just want to go back in time to when everything was beginning. Pregnancies are the ultimate beginnings.

refusing to give him the satisfaction.

People thought that tragedy made you wise, that it automatically elevated you to a higher, more spiritual level, but it seemed to Rachel that just the opposite was true. Tragedy made you petty and spiteful. It didn't give you any great knowledge or insight. She didn't understand a damned thing about life except that it was arbitrary and cruel,

Tess could feel her entire personality being drained from her body. Those talkative, energetic people always left her feeling that way.

She was so transparent. Always a Daddy's girl. It was Stan's approval she so desperately craved, as if it were withheld from her, and yet she'd always had it, from the moment he first held her. Brooke was Stan's favorite. Everyone knew it except for Brooke.

for the most part she'd always felt satisfied or at least accepting of the universe in which she found herself … except for right now, because right now it felt like there had been some sort of cataclysmic quantum-physics administrative error. She'd slipped universes.

And yet here she was. There was nothing else to do, nowhere else to turn. "Goddamn it," she said, and turned

Nowadays we label children too quickly as bullying, when in fact they can only behave like children.

Esther would know who first came up with the idea for the Berlin Wall. Esther would probably be able to give her his date of birth. It would have been a man, of course. Only a man could come up with something so ruthless, so essentially stupid and yet brutally effective.

There was some sort of malfunction going on with how fast the earth was spinning. Decades went by as quick as years once did.

She had joined a tai chi class in the park down the road. She was the only one under the age of seventy. Heather had never been the sort of woman to have girlfriends, but for some reason she fit right in to this elderly circle. "They make me laugh," she said. "And they don't demand anything from me.