Top 250 Alex Michaelides Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Once you kill another human being, there’s no going back.”

— Alex Michaelides

102. “So this was it. This was how it was going to end. Alicia was silent again, and this time her silence would last forever.”

— Alex Michaelides

103. “I went to meet Kathy at the National Theatre cafe on the South Bank, where the performers would often congregate after rehearsal. She was sitting at the back of the cafe with a couple of fellow actresses, deep in conversation. They looked up at me as I approached.”

— Alex Michaelides

104. “What better way for me to prove that my father was correct – that I’m worthless and unlovable – than by pursuing someone who will never love me?”

— Alex Michaelides

105. “After all, everyone’s entitled to be the hero of their own story. So I must be permitted to be the hero of mine. Even though I’m not. I’m the villain.”

— Alex Michaelides

106. “You become increasingly comfortable with madness – and not just the madness of others, but your own. We’re all crazy, I believe, just in different ways.”

— Alex Michaelides

107. “I didn’t want to die. Not yet; when I hadn’t lived.”

— Alex Michaelides

108. “As far as I can see, love only brings sorrow.”

— Alex Michaelides

109. “Who knows what indignities we suffered, what torments and abuses, in this land before memory? Our character was formed without our even knowing it. In my case, I grew up feeling edgy, afraid; anxious. This anxiety seemed to predate my existence and exist independently of me.”

— Alex Michaelides

110. “But if I’m really paying attention, really aware, I sometimes hear a whispering voice pointing me in the right direction. And if I give in to it, as an act of faith, it leads me somewhere unexpected, not where I intended, but somewhere intensely alive, glorious – and the result is independent.”

— Alex Michaelides

111. “Though I am not naturally honest, I am sometimes so by chance. – WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, The Winter’s Tale.”

— Alex Michaelides

112. “It reminds me what sheltered lives we live here in the cloister – naive, perhaps even willfully ignorant of the horrors of the outside world.” Privately, Mariana agreed. Reading about life was no preparation for living it; she had learned this the hard way. But she didn’t say so. She just nodded. “Such violence is horrifying. It’s hard for anyone to comprehend.”

— Alex Michaelides

113. “Without wishing to sound boastful, I felt uniquely qualified to help Alicia Berenson. I’m a forensic psychotherapist and used to working with some of the most damaged, vulnerable members of society. And something about Alicia’s story resonated with me personally – I felt a profound empathy with her right from the start. Unfortunately, I was still working at Broadmoor in those days, and so treating Alicia would have – should have – remained an idle fantasy, had not fate unexpectedly intervened.”

— Alex Michaelides

114. “It doesn’t take much to save a childhood.” A little kindness, some understanding or validation: someone to recognize and acknowledge a child’s reality – and save his sanity.”

— Alex Michaelides

115. “All expensive items, but crammed together like this, they looked like junk. Taken as a representation of Barbie’s mind, it suggested a disordered inner world, to say the least. It made me think of chaos, clutter, greed – insatiable hunger.”

— Alex Michaelides

116. “Psychotherapy had quite literally saved my life. More important, it had transformed the quality of that life. The talking cure was central to who I became – in a profound sense, it defined me.”

— Alex Michaelides

117. “Despite my best homicidal fantasies, I wasn’t a murderer. I couldn’t kill him. I’d have to think of something cleverer than that.”

— Alex Michaelides

118. “I think her behavior suggests she is quite damaged – lacking in empathy and integrity and just plain kindness – all the qualities you brim with.”

— Alex Michaelides

119. “No one is born evil.”

— Alex Michaelides

120. “We need to ask ourselves, is this someone who will be honest with me, listen to criticism, admit making mistakes, and not promise the impossible?”

— Alex Michaelides

121. “Yeah. And Alicia whispered something to me – I’ll never forget it. ‘He killed me,’ she said. ‘Dad just – killed me.’” I stared at Paul, speechless. A chorus of bells started ringing in my head, clanging, chiming, reverberating. This was what I’d been looking for. I’d found it, the missing piece of the jigsaw, at last – here on a roof in Cambridge.”

— Alex Michaelides

122. “One can’t help but wonder what their relationship will be like in the future, Alcestis and Admetus. Trust, once lost, is hard to recover.”

— Alex Michaelides

123. “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.”

— Alex Michaelides

124. “I was a little taken aback, and immediately alert. ‘What do you mean, watching?’ ‘Just what I said. Watching. I told the police, but they didn’t seem interested. They made up their minds the moment they found Alicia with Gabriel’s body and the gun. They didn’t want to listen to any other story.’ ‘What story – exactly?’ ‘I’ll tell you. And you’ll see why I wanted you to come.”

— Alex Michaelides

125. “It’s been here the whole time – my past, I mean – and the reason it’s catching up with me is because it never went anywhere.”

— Alex Michaelides

126. “I need to get out of here. I need to escape. Oh my God – I can hear him – He’s inside. He’s inside the house.”

— Alex Michaelides

127. “The person you love most in the world, has condemned you to die, through their own cowardice. That’s quite a betrayal.”

— Alex Michaelides

128. “My only hope of survival, I realised, was to retreat – physically as well as psychically.”

— Alex Michaelides

129. “It was an odd feeling, a bit like recognizing someone – someone she had once known intimately, and couldn’t quite place where or when they had lost touch. The young man ignored the jeering calls of his friends. And with a curious, widening smile, he made his way over to her. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Sebastian.” And that was it. “It was written” is the Greek expression. Meaning, quite simply, from that moment on, their destinies were sealed.”

— Alex Michaelides

130. “Sit down, then. But don’t talk. I’m working on the face.”

— Alex Michaelides

131. “Paintings, mirrors, and framed photographs were crammed together on the walls; little statues, vases, and other objets d’art competed for space on tables and dressers. All expensive items, but crammed together like this, they looked like junk. Taken as a representation of Barbie’s mind, it suggested a disordered inner world, to say the least. It made me think of chaos, clutter, greed – insatiable hunger. I wondered what her childhood had been like.”

— Alex Michaelides

132. “Lo quiero de una forma tan completa, tan absoluta, que a veces ese sentimiento amenaza con superarme.”

— Alex Michaelides

133. “I suppose what scares me is giving in to the unknown.”

— Alex Michaelides

134. “For some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about the homeless man. Apart from pity, there was another feeling, unnameable somehow – a kind of fear. I pictured him as a baby in his mother’s arms. Did she ever imagine her baby would end up crazy, dirty and stinking, huddled on the pavement, muttering obscenities?”

— Alex Michaelides

135. “Love that doesn’t include honesty doesn’t deserve.”

— Alex Michaelides

136. “But our ability to contain ourselves directly depends on our mother’s ability to contain us – if she had never experienced containment by her own mother, how could she teach us what she did not know? Someone who has never learned to contain himself is plagued by anxious feelings for the rest of his life, feelings that Bion aptly titled nameless dread.”

— Alex Michaelides

137. “I bought an electric fan yesterday. I set it up at the foot of the bed on top of the chest, and Gabriel immediately started complaining. ‘It makes too much noise. We’ll never sleep.”

— Alex Michaelides

138. “But one day, all the hurt and anger would burst forth, like fire from a dragon’s belly – and you’d pick up a gun.”

— Alex Michaelides

139. “It’s sadness you’ve been carrying around for many years. You know, 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.”

— Alex Michaelides

140. “You can’t help me, her eyes shouted. Look at you, you can barely help yourself. You pretend to know so much and be so wise, but you should be sitting here instead of me. Freak. Fraud. Liar. Liar –.”

— Alex Michaelides

141. “Until death do us part.”

— Alex Michaelides

142. “Ruth always said that forgiveness could not be coerced – it was experienced spontaneously, as an act of grace, appearing only when a person was ready.”

— Alex Michaelides

143. “I remember the advice Ruth gave me when Kathy and I first got together: “Choosing a lover is a lot like choosing a therapist. We need to ask ourselves, is this someone who will be honest with me, listen to criticism, admit making mistakes, and not promise the impossible.”

— Alex Michaelides

144. “At the time I didn’t understand. But that’s how therapy works. A patient delegates his unacceptable feelings to his therapist; and she holds everything he is afraid to feel, and feels it for him. Then, ever so slowly, she feeds his feelings back to him.”

— Alex Michaelides

145. “I hold it true, whate’er befall; I feel it when I sorrow most; ‘Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.”

— Alex Michaelides

146. “Boundaries, by definition, are the first thing to go when a child is abused.”

— Alex Michaelides

147. “My argument with so much of psychoanalysis is the preconception that suffering is a mistake, or a sign of weakness, or a sign even of illness. When in fact, possibly the greatest truths we know have come out of people’s suffering. – ARTHUR MILLER.”

— Alex Michaelides

148. “If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me. Job 9:20.”

— Alex Michaelides

149. “When I’m around other people, even if it’s only the bored waitress in here, I feel connected to the world somehow, like a human being. Otherwise I’m in danger of ceasing to exist. Like I might disappear.”

— Alex Michaelides

150. “We are drawn to this particular profession because we are damaged – we study psychology to heal ourselves. Whether we are prepared to admit this or not is another question.”

— Alex Michaelides