Top 250 Alex Michaelides Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “My only hope of survival, I realised, was to retreat – physically as well as psychically.”

— Alex Michaelides

152. “I’ve never been that comfortable with words – I always think in pictures, express myself with images.”

— Alex Michaelides

153. “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

154. “As you will see, it’s an incredible story – of that there is no doubt. Whether you believe it or not is up to you.”

— Alex Michaelides

155. “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

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

— Alex Michaelides

157. “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

158. “Alicia had painted a redbrick building, a hospital – unmistakably the Grove. It was on fire, burning to the ground. Two figures were discernible on the fire escape. A man and a woman escaping the fire. The woman was unmistakably Alicia, her red hair the same color as the flames. I recognized the man as myself. I was carrying Alicia in my arms, holding her aloft while the fire licked at my ankles.”

— Alex Michaelides

159. “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

160. “We leak all kinds of information about ourselves unintentionally – by the colour of my socks, or how I sit or the way I talk – just by sitting here with you, I reveal a great deal about myself.”

— Alex Michaelides

161. “Adesea luam dragostea drept un foc de artificii – drept spectacol si ceva iesit din comun. Insa iubirea adevarata e foarte tacuta, foarte linistita. E plictistoare daca privesti din perspectiva spectaculosului. Iubirea e profunda si calma – si constanta.”

— Alex Michaelides

162. “He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore. – SIGMUND FREUD, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.”

— Alex Michaelides

163. “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

164. “Reading about life was no preparation for living it.”

— Alex Michaelides

165. “During the trial, the judge took a dim view of Alicia’s persistent refusal to speak. 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.”

— Alex Michaelides

166. “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

167. “Therapy isn’t just about talking,” Indira said. “It’s about providing a safe space – a containing environment. Most communication is nonverbal, as I’m sure you know.”

— Alex Michaelides

168. “Alicia was silent again, and this time her silence would last forever.”

— Alex Michaelides

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

— Alex Michaelides

170. “Mariana might not be a detective, but she was a therapist, and she knew how to listen. To listen not only to what was being said, but also to everything unsaid, all the words unspoken – the lies, evasions, projections, transferences, and other psychological phenomena that occurred between two people, and that required a special kind of listening.”

— Alex Michaelides

171. “Her silence was like a mirror – reflecting yourself back at you.”

— Alex Michaelides

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

— Alex Michaelides

173. “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. That memory had repeatedly returned to me over the years. It’s as if the misery that surrounded that brief moment of freedom made it burn even brighter: a tiny light surrounded by darkness.”

— Alex Michaelides

174. “My father’s unpredictable and arbitrary rages made any situation, no matter how benign, into a potential minefield.”

— Alex Michaelides

175. “Although she didn’t know it at the time, she was already so deeply in love, there was no way out again. On some level, they became each other – they joined, like mercury.”

— Alex Michaelides

176. “We swore never to lie to each other. Never pretend. Always be truthful.”

— Alex Michaelides

177. “I tore off a sheet of paper from a pad, and reached for my pen. An old habit, formed at university – something about the process of putting pen to paper helps me organize my mind. I’ve always had difficulty formulating an opinion until I’ve written it down.”

— Alex Michaelides

178. “She felt alert, somehow – perhaps awake was a better word: everything seemed clearer, as if a fog had lifted; colors were sharper, the edges of things more defined. The world no longer felt muted and gray and far away – behind a veil. It felt alive again, and vivid, and full of color, wet with autumn rain; and vibrating with the eternal hum of endless birth and death.”

— Alex Michaelides

179. “What a luxury that would be – to forgive. But I never got that chance.”

— Alex Michaelides

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

— Alex Michaelides

181. “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

182. “An ancient cat lay asleep by her feet, the ugliest cat I’d ever seen – battle scarred, bald in places, one ear bitten off. It was growling in its sleep.”

— Alex Michaelides

183. “Edward Fosca had written it – this hellish love letter – and he had written it to Zoe.”

— Alex Michaelides

184. “Our character was formed without our even knowing it. In my case, I grew up feeling edgy, afraid, anxious.”

— Alex Michaelides

185. “She sat perfectly still, her spine rigid and straight. She looked like a cellist. Or a soldier.”

— Alex Michaelides

186. “I had believed I was too damaged, too incapable of intimacy.”

— Alex Michaelides

187. “If you’re not aware of the transcendent, if you’re not awake to the glorious mystery of life and death that you’re lucky enough to be part of, if that doesn’t fill you with joy and strike you with awe, you might as well not be alive.”

— Alex Michaelides

188. “I had no choice but to go on.”

— Alex Michaelides

189. “This whole mythology of us that I had built up, our hopes and dreams, likes and dislikes, our plans for the future; a life that had seemed so secure, so sturdy, now collapsed in a matter of seconds – like a house of cards in a gust of wind.”

— Alex Michaelides

190. “For a terrifying second I thought he was going to throw me out off the roof.”

— Alex Michaelides

191. “Whatever marijuana did for me was still working, Ruth argued – until the day it would outlive its usefulness, when I would probably relinquish it with ease.”

— Alex Michaelides

192. “How unfortunate for him that you’re such an ethical man.”

— Alex Michaelides

193. “Why don’t you try writing things down? Keeping some kind of record? That might help.”

— Alex Michaelides

194. “To be honest, I can’t really see.”

— Alex Michaelides

195. “As soon as any group establishes itself, it always arouses envy and attack – and not just from forces on the outside, those excluded from the group, but also from dark and dangerous forces within the group itself.”

— Alex Michaelides

196. “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

197. “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. – C. S. LEWIS, A Grief Observed 1 A.”

— Alex Michaelides

198. “Our character was formed without our even knowing it.”

— Alex Michaelides

199. “You’d shoot him five times in the head, without possibly even knowing why.”

— Alex Michaelides

200. “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