Quotes from 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.

Their mother had that look of controlled impatience she used to get when her children fought and she didn't have time to properly lose her temper because she had things to do.

She accumulates stuff to insulate herself from the world,

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

Afterward, I felt it had been wrong not telling the family about the baby, because then I wanted them to know about the miscarriage, so that they knew the baby had existed. But when I told people, they seemed more interested in the fact that I'd kept the pregnancy a secret. They felt they'd been tricked. They said things like "Oh, I did wonder that day when you didn't drink at the Easter BBQ but you said you just didn't feel like drinking!" In other words, LIAR.

There was something pathetic about the rejected wife bravely pulling herself together, joining a tennis club, doing a photography course, cutting her hair, venturing timidly back out onto the single scene.

As she swam she gloried in the fact that there was nowhere to be, nothing to do, no one to worry about. No jazz pickup or karate drop-off, no homework to supervise, no birthday gifts to buy, no doctors' appointments to book; the endless multitude of teeny-tiny details that made up her life. Each obligation on its own seemed laughably easy. It was the sheer volume that threatened to bury her.

It would be so much easier to be aggressive if she were wearing her bra.

If her back had ever hurt like this when she was twenty she would have been hysterical, demanding painkillers and cups of tea in bed, but she has found that nobody is especially surprised to hear you're in pain when you're in your eighties. You might find it astonishing, but nobody else does.

Their uptight concerns about what other people thought seemed like such a waste. Why had they been so careful and contained with their love?

If she was handing over a slice of her heart, she wanted the exact same size given back in return. Actually, she really preferred a bigger piece, thank you very much.

He's the first person I want to tell when somebody upsets me; my foot pressing on the accelerator, desperate to get home from work just to tell him, the moment I tell him, the moment his face lights up with fury on my behalf, it's better, it's fixed.

No one warned you that having children reduced you right down to some smaller, rudimentary, primitive version of yourself, where your talents and your education and your achievements meant nothing.

But Grace quite likes the fact that you can think something is one way all your life, and it turns out you're wrong, it can be something else entirely. It makes her feel free. Nothing is rigid. Things change. You can change your mind. You can change your thinking.

We're all on our own. Even when you're surrounded by people, or sharing a bed with a loving lover, you're alone.

she felt such an intense sensation of happiness it frightened her, because surely there was a price to pay for this sort of bliss.

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

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.

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

As seductive as it might have been to erase the grief and pain of the last ten years, it was also a lie. Young Alice was a fool. A sweet, innocent fool. Young Alice hadn't experienced ten years of living.

Your children see!" screamed Bonnie. Her face was ugly with rage. "We see! We fucking see!

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

Not all mysteries are meant to be solved. Not all secrets are meant to be told.

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.