Quotes from Liane Moriarty

I have no right to be sad about anything. No right to have therapy from expensive doctors like you for losing children who never existed. There is real grief in the world. There are real mothers losing real children.

Death was the hot bath you promised yourself while you endured small talk and uncomfortable shoes. You could stop pretending to have a good time when you were dead.

Perhaps there were no answers to questions like that. Perhaps nothing was ever "meant to be." There was just life, and right now, and doing your best. Being a bit "bendy.

That's how she finally made herself fall back to sleep: by remembering all the glorious moments, one after the other after the other, her children's ecstatic faces looking for their parents in the stands, looking for their approval, looking for their love, knowing it was there, knowing—she hoped they knew this—that it would always be there, even long after she and Stan were gone, because love like that was infinite.

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.

He made her more confident, funnier, smarter. He brought out all the things that were there already and let her be fully herself, so she seemed to shine with this inner light. He loved her so much, he made her seem even more lovable.

She enjoyed being told off by them. She could hear the rhythms of her own voice, her mother's voice, her grandmother's voice, every relieved cranky woman from the beginning of time.

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

Heather had grown up starved of love, and when you're starved of something you should receive in abundance, you never quite trust it.

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.

Anyway, weren't women allowed to be sexist for the next two thousand years or so, until they'd evened up the score?

Every day is a gift, Jake. Of course sometimes it's a really horrible gift that you don't want.

Only a man could come up with something so ruthless, so essentially stupid and yet brutally effective.

She had too much imagination. Too much empathy [...] 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?

We should have given up years ago. It's so clear now. We should have "explored other options." We should have adopted. We gave up years of our lives and we very nearly destroyed our marriage. Our happy ending could have and should have arrived so much sooner. And even though I adore the fact that Francesca has Ben's eyes, I also see now that her biological connection to us is irrelevant.

When she thought of that long night, it was like remembering an extraordinarily tough match where she'd prevailed. Except there was no trophy or applause. The only recognition you got for surviving a night like that came from other mothers. Only they understood the epic nature of your trivial achievements.

Relax and enjoy the journey. The stream will carry you this way and that, but will carry you forward to where you need to go.

I remember thinking about how mothers were prepared to run into burning buildings to save their children's lives. I thought I should be able to go through a bit more suffering, a bit more inconvenience to give my children life. It made me feel noble. But now I realize I'm a crazy woman running into a burning house for children who don't exist.

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

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?

You suppose you are the trouble But you are the cure You suppose that you are the lock on the door But you are the key that opens it Rumi

She wanted to be falling in love, not trying to fix a broken relationship. She wanted to be someone's first choice, not their second.

All conflict can be traced back to someone's feelings getting hurt, don't you think? Divorce. World wars. Legal action. Well, maybe not every legal action.

She didn't come from old money or new money but from never-quite-enough money.