Top 250 Alex Michaelides Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Rage, like fear, is reactive in nature.”

— Alex Michaelides

202. “It was a strange, timeless moment – that first moment they saw each other. Time seemed to slow down, flatten, and stretch. Mariana was transfixed, held in his gaze, unable to look away. 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.”

— Alex Michaelides

203. “I feel better already – writing this down is providing a kind of release, an outlet, a space to express myself. A bit like therapy, I suppose.”

— Alex Michaelides

204. “I didn’t know it then, but it was too late – I had internalized him, buried him deep in my unconscious. No matter how far I ran, I carried him with me wherever I went. I was pursued by an infernal, relentless chorus of furies, all with his voice – shrieking that I was worthless, shameful, a failure.”

— Alex Michaelides

205. “It’s hard to imagine two more different women than Kathy or Alicia. Kathy makes me think of light, warmth, colour and laughter. When I think of Alicia, I think only of depth, of darkness, of sadness. Of silence.”

— Alex Michaelides

206. “The painting was a self-portrait. She titled it in the bottom left-hand corner of the canvas, in light blue Greek lettering. One word: Alcestis.”

— Alex Michaelides

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

— Alex Michaelides

208. “You can’t love someone if you’re afraid of them, Mariana. I know it’s hard to hear. It’s a kind of blindness – but unless you wake up and see clearly, it will persist throughout your whole life, affecting how you see yourself, and others too.”

— Alex Michaelides

209. “Life was a circle too, wasn’t it? – from birth to death.”

— Alex Michaelides

210. “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

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

— Alex Michaelides

212. “You’re wrong about my father,” she said. “I know he’s difficult – but he loves me. And I love him.” “No,” said Ruth firmly. “At best, let’s call it a desire to be loved. At worst, it’s a pathological attachment to a narcissistic man: a melting pot of gratitude, fear, expectation, and dutiful obedience that has nothing to do with love in the true sense of the word. You don’t love him. Nor do you know or love yourself.”

— Alex Michaelides

213. “I wondered if Christian was borderline, not Alicia. That would make more sense.”

— Alex Michaelides

214. “The judge dismissed a lot of this as hearsay.”

— Alex Michaelides

215. “But remember, with greater feeling comes greater danger.”

— Alex Michaelides

216. “Although she didn’t know it at the time, she was already so deeply in love, there was no way out again.”

— Alex Michaelides

217. “You’re so thin, there’s nothing left of you. I’m so jealous.”

— Alex Michaelides

218. “It felt as if a kind of pestilence, a plague, were spreading through the college – as in a Greek myth, the sickness that destroyed Thebes; an invisible airborne poison drifting through the courtyards – and these ancient walls, once a refuge from the outside world, no longer offered any protection.”

— Alex Michaelides

219. “Clarissa gave her the postcard with a smile. “Persephone was rather a vengeful goddess, as I’m sure you know.”

— Alex Michaelides

220. “A vase of pink lilies – Kathy’s favorite flowers – was on the table; their strong musky scent made the air thick and hard to breathe.”

— Alex Michaelides

221. “Someone who has never learned to contain himself is plagued by anxious feelings for the rest of his life.”

— Alex Michaelides

222. “We were crashing through every last boundary between therapist and patient.”

— Alex Michaelides

223. “He’s inside the house.”

— Alex Michaelides

224. “It wasn’t a question of forgiveness. That wasn’t something Mariana could decide on, anyway. Ruth always said that forgiveness could not be coerced – it was experienced spontaneously, as an act of.”

— Alex Michaelides

225. “Kathy did that a lot, protesting her insanity – “I’m crazy,” “I’m nuts,” “I’m insane” – but I never believed her. She laughed too easily and too often for me to believe she’d ever suffered the kind of darkness I had experienced. She had a spontaneity, a lightness – she took a delight in living.”

— Alex Michaelides

226. “An intimate kitchen-sink tragedy.”

— Alex Michaelides

227. “I silently thanked Him for giving me such unexpected, undeserved happiness. I saw things clearly now, I understood His greater purpose, 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. I felt such humility and gratitude every second we spent together, I was aware how lucky, how incredibly fortunate I was to have such love, how rare it was.”

— Alex Michaelides

228. “And how do you intend to get them? By asking her.”

— Alex Michaelides

229. “Elif remained standing. “And what about the pool cue?”

— Alex Michaelides

230. “I felt desperately sorry for her, and those like her – for all of us, all the wounded and the lost.”

— Alex Michaelides

231. “We usually reserve that level of anger for our nearest and dearest, don’t you think?”

— Alex Michaelides

232. “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

233. “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

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

— Alex Michaelides

235. “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

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

— Alex Michaelides

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

— Alex Michaelides

238. “I had no choice but to go on.”

— Alex Michaelides

239. “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

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

— Alex Michaelides

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

— Alex Michaelides

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

— Alex Michaelides

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

— Alex Michaelides

244. “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

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

— Alex Michaelides

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

— Alex Michaelides

247. “And it made me happy – even though I knew the ending.”

— Alex Michaelides

248. “Christian stared at me for a few seconds. I’d forgotten his habit of pausing, often lengthily, making you wait while he considered his response. It irritated me here just as much as it had done at Broadmoor.”

— Alex Michaelides

249. “You want Alicia to feel, yes. But remember, with greater feeling comes greater danger.”

— Alex Michaelides

250. “All she had were some books, a few drawings, her clothes.”

— Alex Michaelides