Top 500 Liane Moriarty Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “They were only on the very outer edge of old age, they were not yet dealing with dementia or confusion, just bad knees and indigestion, some insomnia, apparently.”

— Liane Moriarty

352. “Obstacles cannot crush me; every obstacle yields to stern resolve.” Good one, Leonardo. But the more I think about it, the more I think that maybe I wouldn’t say anything motivational at all. It’s quite possible that I might briskly slap my hands against my knees and say, “Sounds like it’s time you gave up.”

— Liane Moriarty

353. “But things change. People change. It just happens. It’s just life. The fact that you’re getting a divorce doesn’t change the fact that you had all those wonderful times. And I swear.”

— Liane Moriarty

354. “That was the secret of a happy marriage: step away from the rage.”

— Liane Moriarty

355. “There’s not a damned thing wrong with your body. You are average-sized, you deluded fool! You are an attractive, intelligent woman, you idiot! You should spend January lying in a hammock and eating cheese.”

— Liane Moriarty

356. “She made the right choice for the girl she was then.”

— Liane Moriarty

357. “Here’s the thing. You don’t know my father. He’s a stranger to you. All you see is a grumpy old man. He suppresses his emotions. That’s what men of his age do. That’s probably why he looks guilty to you.”

— Liane Moriarty

358. “It was like every fight she’d ever had with her sisters. A wave of rage would sweep her up and carry her high and righteous until she did something embarrassingly excessive. Then it would dump her, splat, leaving her stupid and small.”

— Liane Moriarty

359. “As soon as he woke he’d be desperate to give Celeste his gift. He loved giving presents. The first time she knew she wanted to marry him was when she saw the anticipation on his face, watching his mother open a birthday present he’d bought for her. “Do you like it?” he’d burst out as soon she tore the paper, and his family had all laughed at him for sounding like a big kid.”

— Liane Moriarty

360. “For her, the smell of cigarettes smelled like love. She dated far too many smokers for this reason.”

— Liane Moriarty

361. “One epidural for my headache, please.”

— Liane Moriarty

362. “We’re all on our own. Even when you’re surrounded by people, or sharing a bed with a loving lover, you’re alone.”

— Liane Moriarty

363. “I hate you all. For no particular reason. I guess it’s for the sympathy, the pity and understanding, but most of all, for the hope.”

— Liane Moriarty

364. “When he first met her odd, detached parents he understood that Heather had grown up starved of love, and when you’re starved of something you should receive in abundance, you never quite trust it.”

— Liane Moriarty

365. “Scans showed that the brain activity of someone who had taken psilocybin bore striking similarities to the brain of an experienced meditator during deep meditation.”

— Liane Moriarty

366. “As Jane looked around her, she felt that dissatisfied feeling she often experienced when she was somewhere new and lovely. She couldn’t quite articulate it except with the words “if only I were here”. This little beachside cafe was so exquisite, she longed to really be there – except, of course, she was there, so it didn’t make sense.”

— Liane Moriarty

367. “She thought it was illegal to watch television when the sun was shining.”

— Liane Moriarty

368. “Her cup size didn’t suit either her personality or profession but she was descended from a long line of short, acerbic, busty women, and so this was her lot.”

— Liane Moriarty

369. “She looked at her nine guests, all of whom had their eyes obediently closed as they waited her instructions. Their destinies were in her hands. She was going to change them not just temporarily, but forever.”

— Liane Moriarty

370. “It felt like it was all still there, that time of their lives, somewhere metaphysical, accessible through some magical means other than memory.”

— Liane Moriarty

371. “Now here they were. She couldn’t exactly say if Savannah had caught them on an upswing or a downswing, or if they’d finally found an equilibrium that would last them until death did them part. Sometimes it felt like their relationship ebbed and flowed over a day, or even a conversation. She could feel affection followed by resentment in the space of ten minutes.”

— Liane Moriarty

372. “She remembered her friend Ines talking about how, after her divorce, she’d constructed a desk from an IKEA flatpack on her own while playing ‘I Am Woman’, but then, after she was done, all she’d wanted to do was call her ex and tell him about it.”

— Liane Moriarty

373. “Nick explained that an aperitif was an pre-dinner drink. Nick came from an aperitif-drinking family. Alice came from a family with one dusty bottle of Baileys sitting hopefully in the back of the pantry with the tins of spaghetti.”

— Liane Moriarty

374. “You know, Madison, people are going to say mean things to you all through your life, and if you keep reacting like that, you’re going to end up in jail.”

— Liane Moriarty

375. “Then how is it that not a single one of you can maintain a long-term relationship? Did your father and I not set a good example to you? Of a good marriage?’ Her children all dropped their heads as if she’d called for volunteers for an unpleasant task. ‘So your dad and I weren’t.”

— Liane Moriarty

376. “Listeria, wisteria. Ha. Funny words. She.”

— Liane Moriarty

377. “Finally she stopped resisting and called a truce. Young Alice was allowed to stay as long as she didn’t eat too much chocolate. Now it seemed like she could twist the lens on her life and see it from two entirely different perspectives. The perspective of her younger self. Her younger, sillier, innocent self. And her older, wiser, more cynical and sensible self. And maybe sometimes Young Alice had a point.”

— Liane Moriarty

378. “She’s very loving – maybe too loving. I remember her squatting down in the kitchen saying, ‘Hello, little fella,’ and we all looked down and saw she was trying to pat a cockroach. Mum nearly dropped dead on the spot.”

— Liane Moriarty

379. “He told Harry that he had to win prize money so his sister could get some kind of life-saving medicine. Dumb kid thought he was playing to save his sister’s life. No wonder he cheated. If he’d stayed with me, I would have found out and put a stop to.”

— Liane Moriarty

380. “And sure, they love their kids, but let’s be honest, they’re hard work. And it’s not like you get to keep those adorable babies. Babies disappear. They grow up. They.”

— Liane Moriarty

381. “He was a good man, but they brought out something terrible in each other, like allergic reactions.”

— Liane Moriarty

382. “Every morning I worry that somebody I know will be killed in a terrorist attack that day. That means the terrorists have won, Ben tells me. He doesn’t understand that I’m fighting off the terrorists by worrying about them. It’s my own personal War on Terror.”

— Liane Moriarty

383. “All her children would be single. All possible grandchildren swept off the table in one fell swoop. It would knock her for six, as their father would say. He hated cricket, but liked that particular sporting colloquialism.”

— Liane Moriarty

384. “Claire was Troy’s ex-wife, once a much-loved member of the family, just like Indira and to a lesser extent, Grant. It was like a death each time her children broke up with someone, and over the years there had been many, many deaths.”

— Liane Moriarty

385. “It was just a plate, her father kept saying to Christina. He never understood what that plate represented: Disrespect. Disregard. Contempt.”

— Liane Moriarty

386. “An attractive, elegant, slim woman. The sort of woman she never thought it was possible for her to be. She had become one of those women, those other women, who had seemed too perfectly put together to be real.”

— Liane Moriarty

387. “Real people don’t have the answers. They make mistakes. They say things with great authority and they’re wrong.”

— Liane Moriarty

388. “You think the world begins and ends with you and your perfect little family and your perfect little life and you think stress is finding the perfectly color-coordinated cushions for your new $10,000 sofa.”

— Liane Moriarty

389. “They were sitting on the couch chatting politely with me, not touching, or so it seemed, except that I happened to glance down and I saw that their hands were lying next to each other on the couch, and that Nick was caressing Alice’s little finger with his own. I remember being shocked by a feeling of pure envy. I wanted to be Alice, young and lovely, feeling the secret caress of a handsome boy’s fingertip.”

— Liane Moriarty

390. “They’d been too tired to keep sharpening the edges of their hurt feelings.”

— Liane Moriarty

391. “She has become so irritatingly optimistic ever since she took up salsa dancing.”

— Liane Moriarty

392. “That’s how she finally made herself fall back to sleep: by remembering all the glorious moments, one after the other after the other, her children’s ecstatic faces looking for their parents in the stands, looking for their approval, looking for their love, knowing it was there, knowing – she hoped they knew this – that it would always be there, even long after she and Stan were gone, because love like that was infinite.”

— Liane Moriarty

393. “I must eat,” said Amy. “Brooke, go tell Mum we have to eat something now because you’re getting a migraine.” “You tell her you have to eat because you’re having a panic attack,” retorted Brooke. “Tell her Logan is hungry,” said Troy. “She won’t want Logan to be hungry.” “I told her I was hungry an hour ago,” said Logan.”

— Liane Moriarty

394. “A dying person can take pride in her thinness, point at her hipbones, and say, “Look how skinny I am!” as if it’s a nice bonus, and you can’t shout, “You’re skinny because you’re DYING, you silly woman!”

— Liane Moriarty

395. “I’m not going to stop worrying. I like worrying. I come from a long line of worriers. It’s in my blood. I just want you to make it stop hurting, please, Dr. Hodges.”

— Liane Moriarty

396. “Stan Delaney had always known that women had the power to draw blood with their words. It was his mother’s favorite hobby: to knife the soft, stupid, defenseless egos of her husband and her son.”

— Liane Moriarty

397. “Troy couldn’t make himself care or focus. The market was quiet, but not that quiet. His heart wasn’t in it. He’d made only one trade in the last two hours. That was a signal he should stop for the day, according to his own rules, and rule number one was Follow Your Own Rules.”

— Liane Moriarty

398. “I knew there is nothing more patronizing to an Infertile than to hear a new mother complaining, as if that will make you feel better for not having your own baby. It’s like telling a blind person, “Oh, sure, you get to see mountains and sunsets, but there are also rubbish dumps and pollution! Terrible!”

— Liane Moriarty

399. “The doctors would fix her head and everything would be OK. She began shoving things back into the backpack. As she picked up the leather-bound diary, a photo fell out. It was a photo of three children in school uniform. It was obviously a posed shot because they were sitting in a row on a step with their elbows on their knees and their chins in their hands. There were two girls and a boy. The boy was in the middle. He had.”

— Liane Moriarty

400. “She knew one tiny grandchild was all it would take to stop the silence roaring, to make her days splutter back to life again, but you could not ask your children for grandchildren.”

— Liane Moriarty