Top 250 Alex Michaelides Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “Lloraba por todos nosotros. Hay demasiado dolor en todas partes, solo que cerramos los ojos para no verlo.”

— Alex Michaelides

102. “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

103. “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

104. “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

105. “I know now that when I have an agenda for a picture, a predetermined idea how it should turn out, it never works. It remains stillborn, lifeless. 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 of me, with a life force of its own.”

— Alex Michaelides

106. “Unexpressed emotions will never die.”

— Alex Michaelides

107. “We were crashing through every last boundary between therapist and patient. And soon it would be impossible to tell who was who.”

— Alex Michaelides

108. “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

109. “No one is born evil.”

— Alex Michaelides

110. “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

111. “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

112. “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

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

— Alex Michaelides

114. “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

115. “It’s odd how quickly one adapts to the strange new world of a psychiatric unit. 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

116. “If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.”

— Alex Michaelides

117. “Innocent people, Mr. Justice Alverstone pointed out, tended to proclaim their innocence loudly – and often. Alicia not only remained silent, but she showed no visible signs of remorse. She didn’t cry once throughout the trial – a fact made much of in the press – her face remaining unmoved, cold. Frozen. The defense had little choice but to enter a plea of diminished.”

— Alex Michaelides

118. “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

119. “I felt safe, suddenly. I felt calm, and at peace – as if a raging fever had abated, a delirium burned itself out. I felt the other part of me, the good part, rising with the dawn...”

— Alex Michaelides

120. “We need to be brave enough to sit with the madness, to hold it – instead of trying to lock it up.”

— Alex Michaelides

121. “Like therapy, music is about a relationship, entirely dependent on the teacher you choose.”

— Alex Michaelides

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

— Alex Michaelides

123. “On some level, they became each other – they joined, like mercury.”

— Alex Michaelides

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

— Alex Michaelides

125. “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

126. “Until death do us part.”

— Alex Michaelides

127. “The liminal is between two worlds – on the very edge of what it means to be human – where everything is stripped away from you; where you transcend this life, and experience something beyond it.”

— Alex Michaelides

128. “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

129. “God hadn’t abandoned me during my childhood, when I had felt so alone and so scared – He had been keeping Kathy hidden up His sleeve, waiting to produce her, like a deft magician.”

— Alex Michaelides

130. “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

131. “You can’t love someone if you’re afraid of them.”

— Alex Michaelides

132. “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

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

— Alex Michaelides

134. “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

135. “In order to be a good therapist, you must be receptive to your patients’ feelings – but you must not hold on to them – they are not yours – they do not belong to you.”

— Alex Michaelides

136. “You’ve come too far and worked too hard to return to a life of dishonesty and denial and emotional abuse.”

— Alex Michaelides

137. “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

138. “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

139. “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

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

— Alex Michaelides

141. “Remember, love that doesn’t include honesty doesn’t deserve to be called love.” I sighed, deflated, depressed, and tired.”

— Alex Michaelides

142. “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

143. “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

144. “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

145. “Except Mariana knew he wasn’t a phantom, or a monster. He was just a man, and he didn’t merit being mythologized; he didn’t deserve it.”

— Alex Michaelides

146. “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

147. “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

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

— Alex Michaelides

149. “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

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

— Alex Michaelides