Top 500 Liane Moriarty Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “It seems to make no difference that she still feels exactly the same person as when she was twenty-five, the birthdays just keep right on coming.”

— Liane Moriarty

402. “She didn’t believe in alternate realities. She believed in the transcendent power of love, memory and imagination. ‘Anything is possible.”

— Liane Moriarty

403. “She wanted to see it clearly, to understand that it wasn’t all black, or all white. It was a million colors. And.”

— Liane Moriarty

404. “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

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

— Liane Moriarty

406. “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

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

— Liane Moriarty

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

— Liane Moriarty

409. “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

410. “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

411. “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

412. “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

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

— Liane Moriarty

414. “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

415. “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

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

— Liane Moriarty

417. “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

418. “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

419. “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

420. “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

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

— Liane Moriarty

422. “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

423. “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

424. “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

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

— Liane Moriarty

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

— Liane Moriarty

427. “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

428. “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

429. “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

430. “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

431. “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

432. “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

433. “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

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

— Liane Moriarty

435. “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

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

— Liane Moriarty

437. “Don’t buy into this idea that you’ve only truly ‘lived’ if you’ve traveled. As if taking the same photos at the same tourist spots as everyone else is the only thing that counts as living.”

— Liane Moriarty

438. “She’d take Jane Turner’s brisk snippiness any day over this woman’s prissy sweetness with its razor-sharp edges.”

— Liane Moriarty

439. “It’s never too late for an apology. Correction: Sometimes it is too late. Never mind.”

— Liane Moriarty

440. “She needed to find someone who would let her say all sorts of horrible, bitchy things and not judge her for it or pass them on.”

— Liane Moriarty

441. “When you divorce someone, you divorce the whole family.”

— Liane Moriarty

442. “She has never been loved by someone who is happy just to see her happy.”

— Liane Moriarty

443. “Sometimes it was exhilaratingly easy to be happy again. Other times they found that they did have to “try”.”

— Liane Moriarty

444. “Detoxing is a myth, darling, it’s been debunked! Your liver does it for you. Or maybe it’s your kidneys. It’s all taken care of somehow.”

— Liane Moriarty

445. “It had felt like she was starting a new job: her job as a primary school mother. There would be rules and paperwork and procedures to learn.”

— Liane Moriarty

446. “My God, she despised spaghetti bolognese. Night after night after night, plate after plate after plate. The laundry, the ironing, the mopping, the sweeping, the driving. She’d never resented it at the time but now she resented every moment, every single bloody lamb chop.”

— Liane Moriarty

447. “Her mother specialized in the tiny razor-sharp dig wrapped in a soft compliment, so you didn’t notice the blood until afterward.”

— Liane Moriarty

448. “Harry Potter deserved to feel fear and confusion, because he was legally, morally and spiritually in the wrong. It happened so rarely that you knew that you were right and the other guy was wrong; Troy was Spider-Man, the Hulk, Captain America. He was goddamned Batman. He had never felt better.”

— Liane Moriarty

449. “Then I said those words I’d heard Mum say to some women, with more conviction than any of her other predictions. I said, “I see you leaving.” I see you leaving. It’s what my mother would say to women who cried into soggy, balled-up handkerchiefs while they asked, “Will I ever be happy, Madame Mae?” She’d say it over and over, at every reading: I see you leaving, I see you leaving, I see you leaving. Until finally they saw themselves leaving too.”

— Liane Moriarty

450. “Alice walked into the kitchen one day and found Tom carefully stuffing his nose with frozen peas. I wanted to see if the peas would come out of my eyeballs, he told the doctor.”

— Liane Moriarty