LMLiane Moriarty

66 collected words

Liane Moriarty

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

▷ Play this voice Search these words ↗Place in time ↗happiness mind justice truth friendship work faith death

Quotations and sayings

01Undated

The sky looks comfortingly mundane compared to the garish kaleidoscope of the stained glass. It makes Rose yearn to be reliving any one of a thousand ordinary days spent with her ordinary older sister, who has now done this extraordinary thing and died.

Liane Moriarty / quote

02Undated

As she drove the familiar route to the school, she considered her magnificent new age. Forty. She could still feel "forty" the way it felt when she was fifteen. Such a colorless age. Marooned in the middle of your life. Nothing would matter all that much when you were forty. You wouldn't have real feelings when you were forty, because you'd be safely cushioned by your frumpy forty

Liane Moriarty / quote

03Undated

They lost Olivia at Newport Beach. The panic made Alice hyperventilate. You were meant to be watching her, Nick kept saying. As if that were the point. That Alice had made a mistake. Not that Olivia was missing, but that it was Alice's fault.

Liane Moriarty / quote

04Undated

When you divorce someone, you divorce their whole family, Madeline had told her once.

Liane Moriarty / quote

05Undated

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.

Liane Moriarty / quote

06Undated

Just because a marriage ended didn't mean that it hadn't been happy at times.

Liane Moriarty / quote

07Undated

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. She is her own little person. She is Francesca. If we weren't her "natural" parents, we would still have loved her just as much.

Liane Moriarty / quote

08Undated

All conflict can be traced back to someone’s feelings getting hurt, don’t you think?

Liane Moriarty / quote

09Undated

She felt detached from all aspects of her life. She had no time anymore to feel. All that time she used to waste feeling, and analyzing her feelings, as if they were a matter of national significance.

Liane Moriarty / quote

10Undated

...the terrible thought occurred to her that perhaps she'd always unconsciously believed that because Sam didn't cry, he therefore didn't feel, or he felt less, not as profoundly or deeply as she did. Her focus had always been on how his actions affected her feelings, as if his role was to do things for her, to her, and all that mattered was her emotional response to him, as if a "man" were a product or service, and she'd finally chosen the right brand to get the right response. Was it possible she'd never seen or truly loved him the way he deserved to be loved? As a person? An ordinary, flawed, feeling person?

Liane Moriarty / quote

11Undated

...the terrible though occurred to her that perhaps she'd always unconsciously believed that because Sam didn't cry, he therefore didn't feel, or he felt less, not as profoundly or deeply as she did. Her focus had always been on how his actions affected her feelings, as if his role was to do things for her, to her, and all that mattered was her emotional response to him, as if a "man" were a product or service, and she'd finally chosen the right brand to get the right response. Was it possible she'd never seen or truly loved him the way he deserved to be loved? As a person? An ordinary, flawed, feeling person?

Liane Moriarty / quote

12Undated

They would think she was savoring the taste (blueberries, cinnamon, cream-excellent), but she was actually savoring the whole morning, trying to catch it, pin it down, keep it safe before all those precious moments became yet another memory.

Liane Moriarty / quote

13Undated

We'd traveled, we'd been to lots of parties, lots of movies and concerts, we'd slept in. We'd done all those things that people with children seem to miss so passionately. We didn't want those things anymore. We wanted a baby.

Liane Moriarty / quote

14Undated

Why did she give up wine for Lent? Polly was more sensible. She had given up strawberry jam. Cecilia had never seen Polly show more than a passing interest in strawberry jam, although now, of course, she was always catching her standing at the open fridge, staring at it longingly. The power of denial.

Liane Moriarty / quote

15Undated

Mothers took their mothering so seriously now. Their frantic little faces...Ponytails swinging. Eyes fixed on the mobile phones held in the palms of their hands like compasses.

Liane Moriarty / quote

16Undated

We all, as parents, are laughing at ourselves and helicopter parenting and saying, 'This isn't the way we were parented; we were allowed to run free.' When I talk to my friends, we are all fascinated by what we are doing, but we can't seem to stop ourselves.

Liane Moriarty / quote

17Undated

Google is my best friend and my worst enemy. It's fabulous for research, but then it becomes addictive. I'll have a character eating an orange, and next thing I'm Googling types of oranges, I'm visiting chat rooms about oranges, I'm learning the history of the orange.

Liane Moriarty / quote

18Undated

Friends and family do not believe you write fiction. They truly believe that every word you write is either autobiographical or based on them. I once had a character say that she never wanted to be invited to another children's birthday party, and I never received another children's birthday party invitation ever again.

Liane Moriarty / quote