Top 250 Alex Michaelides Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Trust, once lost, is hard to recover.”

— Alex Michaelides

2. “In group therapy, the group, not the individual, is the focus of treatment: to be a successful group therapist is – to some extent – to be invisible.”

— Alex Michaelides

3. “Recuerda, el amor que no implica sinceridad no merece el nombre de amor.”

— Alex Michaelides

4. “We can’t take part in therapy if we feel unsafe. Boundaries make us feel safe. Boundaries are what therapy is about.”

— Alex Michaelides

5. “No one is born evil. As Winnicott put it, “A baby cannot hate the mother, without the mother first hating the baby.”

— Alex Michaelides

6. “I just get so stuck in my head sometimes. I feel like I’m wading through mud.”

— Alex Michaelides

7. “Plato said the soul was a circle – which made sense to Mariana. Life was a circle too, wasn’t it? – from birth to death.”

— Alex Michaelides

8. “But that’s what Alicia did for you. Her silence was like a mirror – reflecting yourself back at you. And it was often an ugly sight.”

— Alex Michaelides

9. “Well, I’d rather be lonely than be with the wrong person.”

— Alex Michaelides

10. “You don’t need to be mad to work here, but it helps”?”

— Alex Michaelides

11. “Somehow grasping at vanishing snowflakes is like grasping at happiness: an act of possession that instantly gives way to nothing.”

— Alex Michaelides

12. “The real motivation was purely selfish. I was on a quest to help myself. I believe the same is true for most people who go into mental health.”

— Alex Michaelides

13. “If looks could kill, I would have dropped dead.”

— Alex Michaelides

14. “She used to say we are made up of different parts, some good, some bad, and that a healthy mind can tolerate this ambivalence and juggle both good and bad at the same time.”

— Alex Michaelides

15. “Please believe in yourself and pay no heed to negative voices, inside or outside your head. And keep going.”

— Alex Michaelides

16. “Somehow grasping at vanishing snowflakes is like grasping at happiness: an act of possession that instantly gives way to nothing. It reminded me that there was a world outside this house: a world of vastness and unimaginable beauty; a world that, for now, remained out of my reach.”

— Alex Michaelides

17. “It was written” is the Greek expression. Meaning, quite simply, from that moment on, their destinies were sealed.”

— Alex Michaelides

18. “A baby cannot hate the mother, without the mother first hating the baby.”

— Alex Michaelides

19. “If people don’t reply when you speak to them and never initiate conversation, you soon forget they’re there.”

— Alex Michaelides

20. “Rats desert a sinking ship. They don’t clamber on board.”

— Alex Michaelides

21. “As human beings, in our earliest years we reside in a land before memory.”

— Alex Michaelides

22. “But real love is very quiet, very still. It’s boring, if seen from the perspective of high drama. Love is deep and calm – and constant. I.”

— Alex Michaelides

23. “A trainee who is not anxious will be sick.”

— Alex Michaelides

24. “Ali prava ljubav je vrlo tiha, vrlo mirna. Dosadna je, ako se promatra iz perspektive velike drame. Ljubav je duboka i mirna – i konstantna.”

— Alex Michaelides

25. “Todos estamos locos, creo yo, solo que en diferente grado.”

— Alex Michaelides

26. “We often mistake love for fireworks – for drama and dysfunction. But REAL LOVE is very quiet, very still. It’s boring if seen from the perspective of high drama. Love is deep, calm, and constant.”

— Alex Michaelides

27. “I didn’t kill Gabriel. Gabriel killed me. All I did was pull the trigger.”

— Alex Michaelides

28. “Remember, love that doesn’t include honesty doesn’t deserve to be called love.”

— Alex Michaelides

29. “Maybe I’ll call it nothing. An unnamed something that I occasionally write in. I like that better. Once you name something, it stops you seeing the whole of it, or why it matters. You focus on the word, which is just the tiniest part, really, the tip of an iceberg. I’ve never been that comfortable with words – I always think in pictures, express myself with images – so I’d never have started writing this if it weren’t for Gabriel.”

— Alex Michaelides

30. “I suppose what scares me is giving in to the unknown. I like to know where I’m going. That’s why I always make so many sketches – trying to control the outcome – no wonder nothing comes to life – because I’m not really responding to what’s going on in front of me. I need to open my eyes and look – and be aware of life as it is happening, and not simply how I want it to be.”

— Alex Michaelides

31. “How can one drowning rat save another?”

— Alex Michaelides

32. “We’re all crazy, I believe, just in different ways.”

— Alex Michaelides

33. “Once you name something, it stops you seeing the whole of it, or why it matters.”

— Alex Michaelides

34. “The psychoanalyst W. R. Bion came up with the term containment to describe a mother’s ability to manage her baby’s pain.”

— Alex Michaelides

35. “There’s so much pain everywhere, and we just close our eyes to it. The truth is we’re all scared. We’re terrified of each other. I’m terrified of myself – and of my mother in me. Is her madness in my blood? Is it? Am I going to – No. Stop. Stop – I’m not writing about that. I’m not.”

— Alex Michaelides

36. “Love is deep and calm – and constant.”

— Alex Michaelides

37. “The development of our personalities doesn’t take place in isolation, but in relationship with others – we are shaped and completed by unseen, unremembered forces; namely, our parents. This is frightening, for obvious reasons. Who.”

— Alex Michaelides

38. “My old therapist used to say intimacy requires the repeated experience of being responded to – and that doesn’t happen overnight.”

— Alex Michaelides

39. “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive, and will come forth later, in uglier ways. – SIGMUND FREUD.”

— Alex Michaelides

40. “I was pursued by an infernal, relentless chorus of furies, all with his voice – shrieking that I was worthless, shameful, a failure.”

— Alex Michaelides

41. “Everything which was built on lies and untruths will fall away from you.”

— Alex Michaelides

42. “As the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott put it, “There is no such thing as a baby.” The development of our personalities doesn’t take place in isolation, but in relationship with others – we are shaped and completed by unseen, unremembered forces; namely, our parents.”

— Alex Michaelides

43. “Alicia is a silent siren, my boy, luring us to the rocks, where we dash our therapeutic ambition to pieces.”

— Alex Michaelides

44. “If people don’t reply when you speak to them and never initiate conversation, you soon forget they’re there. Alicia had quickly melted into the background, becoming invisible.”

— Alex Michaelides

45. “Ah. I see.” Ruth nodded. “We’ve talked about this before. Haven’t we?” “About fireworks?” “About love. About how we often mistake love for fireworks – for drama and dysfunction. But real love is very quiet, very still. It’s boring, if seen from the perspective of high drama. Love is deep and calm – and constant. I imagine you do give Kathy love – in the true sense of the word.”

— Alex Michaelides

46. “The spring is wound up tight. It will uncoil of itself. That is what is so convenient in tragedy. The least little turn of the wrist will do the job. – JEAN ANOUILH, Antigone.”

— Alex Michaelides

47. “The temple was dedicated to Demeter, goddess of the harvest – goddess of life – and to her daughter, Persephone – goddess of death. The two goddesses were often worshipped together, two sides of the same coin – mother and daughter, life and death. In Greek, Persephone was known simply as Kore, meaning “maiden.”

— Alex Michaelides

48. “About love. About how we often mistake love for fireworks – for drama and dysfunction. But real love is very quiet, very still.”

— Alex Michaelides

49. “The dead don’t talk.”

— Alex Michaelides

50. “Theo, one of the hardest things to admit is that we weren’t loved when we needed it most. It’s a terrible feeling, the pain of not being loved.’ She was right, of course. I had.”

— Alex Michaelides