Top 500 Liane Moriarty Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “One minute they were driving her home from the hospital, a tiny, wrinkled, squalling baby. The next she was all legs and cheekbones and opinions. Whoosh. It made Alice’s head spin.”

— Liane Moriarty

452. “That’s what’s important these days, isn’t it. Everything should be fun and lighthearted.”

— Liane Moriarty

453. “I can’t believe they let us name a person,” Nick had said. “It feels like something only the King of the Land should be able to do.” “Or the Queen of the Kingdom,” Alice said. “Oh, they’d never let a woman name a person,” said Nick. “Obviously.”

— Liane Moriarty

454. “But how had Grant managed to establish himself as the prize?”

— Liane Moriarty

455. “It was strange how he’d always made her feel like they were winning as a couple, even when they were breaking up.”

— Liane Moriarty

456. “Math, by the way, is a language, I would argue a beautiful one, and it’s the only universal language there is, because it’s the same all over the world.”

— Liane Moriarty

457. “They’d both apologized, and there had been no lingering bitterness. Will wasn’t a sulker. He was actually pretty good at negotiating a compromise. And he rarely lost his sense of humor or ability to laugh at himself. “Did you see the way I repacked your frying pan?” he said. “That was a masterstroke, eh? Put you in your place, didn’t it?” For a moment.”

— Liane Moriarty

458. “It made Alice sick with guilt when she thought about what they had put the children through that year. She and Nick had been so young, so full of the earth-shattering importance of their own feelings.”

— Liane Moriarty

459. “There were breakfasts when Nick was away for work. She ate her toast in bed when he was away, relishing the romantic pain of missing him, as if he were a sailor or soldier. It was like enjoying feeling hungry when you knew you’d be having a huge dinner.”

— Liane Moriarty

460. “Didn’t the stupid man realize that he no longer had the power to send anyone to their room?”

— Liane Moriarty

461. “If free will doesn’t exist, if all your decisions and actions are inevitable, are you still required to apologize for them?”

— Liane Moriarty

462. “Perhaps we all need a good thump on the head from time to time?”

— Liane Moriarty

463. “I’m only temporarily tragic, she told herself.”

— Liane Moriarty

464. “Ooh, sacrilege!’ Amy had said, because her role as the oldest child was to narrate every family argument and use big words the other kids didn’t understand, while Brooke, still little and adorable, had burst into inevitable tears, and Logan’s face became blank and moronic.”

— Liane Moriarty

465. “I’d be at work, where people respected my opinions,” said Nick. “And then I’d come home and it was like I was the village idiot. I’d pack the dishwasher the wrong way. I’d pick the wrong clothes for the children. I stopped offering to help. It wasn’t worth the criticism.”

— Liane Moriarty

466. “Instead of remembering grief and devastation, she remembered the terrible injustice of the cheesecake.”

— Liane Moriarty

467. “I’ll never be a normal person ever again. You took that away from me. You made me ABNORMAL and it’s lonely being abnormal.”

— Liane Moriarty

468. “Maybe it’s her gray hair that places her so squarely in the category of “lady.” It is the soft silver of an expensive kitten. Shoulder length. Nicely styled. Good hair. “Good gray.” The sort of gray that makes you consider going gray yourself! One day. Not yet.”

— Liane Moriarty

469. “She’d been so cozy in the cocoon of their relationship. She assumed she got to stay there forever.”

— Liane Moriarty

470. “She found that the less she thought, the more often she found simple truths appearing right in front of her.”

— Liane Moriarty

471. “What was the actual benefit of accuracy when it came to memories?”

— Liane Moriarty

472. “We’re not all beautiful, just like we’re not all musical, and that’s fine. And don’t give me that inner beauty shining through crap either.”

— Liane Moriarty

473. “Domestic violence victims often don’t look at all like you’d expect them to look,” said Susi. “And their stories don’t always sound as black-and-white as you’d expect them to sound.”

— Liane Moriarty

474. “Women in the 1980s won’t be enduring that kind of sexist behavior.” If you worked in an office in the eighties, please take this moment for a hollow laugh.”

— Liane Moriarty

475. “It was as though he had an amazing skill, like playing a complicated musical instrument, that Alice could never hope to master.”

— Liane Moriarty

476. “Zach was still there. He wasn’t going anywhere. He was going to stick around while she finished uni and traveled and got a job and got married and got old. Just because he chose death didn’t mean Zoe couldn’t choose life. He was still there in her heart and her memory, and he was going to stay beside her, keeping her company right until the end.”

— Liane Moriarty

477. “Grandchildren would be her second chance to get it right. Now she had the time and the eggs to spare, and she would be present with her grandchildren.”

— Liane Moriarty

478. “I like to imagine Dad waiting for her on the dance floor at The Cab, one hand behind his straight back, the other hand outstretched, ready to take hers, to swing her away.”

— Liane Moriarty

479. “The children had become wriggly and giggly, almost as if they were drunk. They seemed unable to sit still. They were sliding of their chairs, constantly knocking cutlery onto the floor, and talking in high-pitched voices over the top of one another. Alice didn’t know if this was normal behavior or not. It wasn’t exactly relaxing. Nick had his jaw clenched, as if this dinner were a horrible medical procedure he had to endure.”

— Liane Moriarty

480. “Well, if it was a diary, Joy certainly would not read it. Absolutely not. That sort of gross invasion of privacy was only appropriate for one’s own children.”

— Liane Moriarty

481. “You never know what your last words are going to be, so try to choose them all wisely.”

— Liane Moriarty

482. “It wasn’t just that her memories of the last ten years were back. It was that her true self, as formed by those ten years, was back. As seductive as it might have been to erase the grief and pain of the last ten years, it was also a lie. Young Alice was a fool. A sweet, innocent fool. Young Alice hadn’t experienced ten years of living.”

— Liane Moriarty

483. “Like so many things in life, it had seemed like an excellent idea at the time.”

— Liane Moriarty

484. “She felt as if she needed to run crazily across a huge expanse of grass, flinging her body about like a puppy let off its leash.”

— Liane Moriarty

485. “Amy, who was handling lockdown far better than her friends, because they had never experienced the permanent low-level sense of existential dread that Amy had been experiencing since she was eight years old.”

— Liane Moriarty

486. “Full-time work caused a kind of claustrophobic terror to build and build within her chest until one day there was a humiliating emotional spillage that resulted in her termination or resignation.”

— Liane Moriarty

487. “It’s strange how rarely you sit quietly opposite the people you love, without a menu or a meal or a drink between you.”

— Liane Moriarty

488. “Maybe, thought Alice fearfully, the other Alice who has been living my life for the last ten years isn’t very nice.”

— Liane Moriarty

489. “Their mother had that look of controlled impatience she used to get when her children fought and she didn’t have time to properly lose her temper because she had things to do.”

— Liane Moriarty

490. “The thought of separating from Jessica was like having his guts ripped out, but these days being married to Jessica was like having his guts ripped out. Whatever way you looked at it: guts ripped out.”

— Liane Moriarty

491. “Maybe this doctor was one of those brilliant people who are hopeless with normal stuff like dates.”

— Liane Moriarty

492. “Hooray!” said her mother. “I’m so glad you’ve lost your memory. This accident is going to turn out to be a blessing in disguise.”

— Liane Moriarty

493. “Sometimes she abrogated responsibility by fantasizing about kidnappers bursting into the house, bundling her into the back of their van, and taking her away for a long rest in a nice, cool, quiet dungeon.”

— Liane Moriarty

494. “Chaos theory is the idea that a tiny change now can result in a large change later. It was first observed by a meteorologist modeling a weather sequence. He mistakenly rounded his variables to three decimal places instead of six, and was shocked to discover this tiny change transformed his entire pattern of simulated weather over a two-month period, thereby proving even the most insignificant change in the atmosphere may have a dramatic effect on the weather.”

— Liane Moriarty

495. “I want gunshots and canned laughter and dog food commercials. Nothing seems too tragic when the television is blaring.”

— Liane Moriarty

496. “She’s impossible to hate. I’m very good at hating people, and even I find it difficult. I really have to put my heart and soul into it.”

— Liane Moriarty

497. “A child laughed; a long, gurgling giggle, like a stream of soap bubbles.”

— Liane Moriarty

498. “You want me to do the gutters?’ Logan had said. Climate change. His mother threw certain phrases around at random to make sure they knew she was up to date with current affairs and listened to podcasts.”

— Liane Moriarty

499. “There was nothing Joy could do to change the outcome of her children’s lives, any more than she could have changed the outcome of their matches, no matter how hard.”

— Liane Moriarty

500. “Look a little closer at the next older lady you meet. You might see that sparkle. Or you might not. Some of us are grumpy and sad. Some of us are in serious pain... our feet, our hips, our shoulders. Some of us are crazed with grief and regret for wrong decisions. Never mind.”

— Liane Moriarty