“Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It's light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you've hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you've seen the worst and the best-- well, that sort of love is ineffable. It deserves its own word.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“But maybe every life looked wonderful if all you saw was the photo albums.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“Each memory, good and bad, was another invisible thread that bound them together...It was as simple and complicated as that. Love after children, after you've hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you've seen the worst and the best...-well, that sort of love is ineffable. It deserves its own word.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“They would think she was savoring the taste (blueberries, cinnamon, cream-excellent), but she was actually savoring the whole morning, trying to catch it, pin it down, keep it safe before all those precious moments became yet another memory.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“She had always thought that exquisitely happy time at the beginning of her relationship with Nick was the ultimate, the feeling they'd always be trying to replicate, to get back, but now she realized that was wrong. That was like comparing sparkling mineral water to French champagne. Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It's light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But love after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you've hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you've seen the worst and the best--well, that sort of a love is ineffable. It deserves its own word.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“So now I just assume that it won't work, and that if it does work, I'll lose it anyway. This is meant to protect me, although it doesn't, because somehow the hope sneakily finds its way in. I'm never aware of the hope until it's gone, whooshed away like a rug pulled from under my feet, each time I hear another "I'm sorry.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“He got Alice, the way we did, or maybe even more so than us. He made her more confident, funnier, smarter. He brought out all the things that were there already and let her be fully herself, so she seemed to shine with this inner light.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“The medication, the hormones and the relentless frustrations of our lives make us bitchy and you're not allowed to be bitchy in public or people won't like you.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“She was busy thinking about the concept of forgiveness. It was such a lovely, generous idea when it wasn't linked to something awful that needed forgiving.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“Just because a marriage ended didn't mean that it hadn't been happy at times.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“How strange it all was. Wouldn't it be a lot less messy if everyone just stayed with the people they married in the first place?”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“she was remembering what it was like when you broke up with someone. Conversations became so hopelessly tangled. You had to be polite and precise. You couldn’t safely criticize anymore, because you didn’t have the right. You’d lost your immunity.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“We'd traveled, we'd been to lots of parties, lots of movies and concerts, we'd slept in. We'd done all those things that people with children seem to miss so passionately. We didn't want those things anymore. We wanted a baby.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“And even though I adore the fact that Francesca has Ben's eyes, I also see now that her biological connection to us is irrelevant. She is her own little person. She is Francesca. If we weren't her "natural" parents, we would still have loved her just as much.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“Finally she stopped resisting and called a truce. Young Alice was allowed to stay as long as she didn't eat too much chocolate.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“It was good to remember that for every horrible memory from her marriage, there was also a happy one. She wanted to see it clearly, to understand that it wasn’t all black, or all white. It was a million colors. And yes, ultimately it hadn’t worked out, but that was okay. Just because a marriage ended didn’t mean that it hadn’t been happy at times. She thought about that”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“It seemed truly frightening that it was only by sheer chance that she had met Nick. It could so easily not have happened and then she would have had a shadowy, half-alive existence, like some sort of woodland creature who never sees sunlight, never even knowing how much she could love and how much she could be loved. Elisabeth once said — very definitely and severely — that the right man didn't complete you, you have to find happiness yourself, and Alice nodded agreeably, while thinking to herself, 'Oh, but yes he does.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“That's what's so embarrassing about all this. Each time I sobbed for a lost baby, it was like sobbing over the end of a relationship when I'd never even gone out with the guy. My babies weren't babies. They were just microscopic clusters of cells that weren't ever going to be anything else. they were just my own desperate hopes. Dream babies. And people have to give up on dreams.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“He made her more confident, funnier, smarter. He brought out all the things that were there already and let her be fully herself, so she seemed to shine with this inner light. He loved her so much, he made her seem even more lovable.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“Alice would give anything, anything at all, to be lying in bed with Nick, waiting for a cup of tea. Maybe he got sick of making her cups of tea? Was that it? Had she taken him for granted? Who did she think she was, some sort of princess, lying in bed waiting for cups of tea to be delivered.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“We should have given up years ago. It's so clear now. We should have "explored other options." We should have adopted. We gave up years of our lives and we very nearly destroyed our marriage. Our happy ending could have and should have arrived so much sooner. And even though I adore the fact that Francesca has Ben's eyes, I also see now that her biological connection to us is irrelevant.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“A thank-you card,” repeated Alice. “Yes. I know, I know, it’s teaching them good manners and everything, but I sort of hate those thank-you cards. I always imagine the kids groaning and having to be forced into writing them. It makes me feel like an elderly aunt.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“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, quote from What Alice Forgot
“Relationships don’t stay the same. There isn’t time.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“How could she not be with someone forever when even their feet-his huge, not especially attractive feet, with their long hairy toes-felt like home?”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“I can hardly bear to think of ourselves hugging and crying and making giggly phone calls, like we were in some inane sitcom. We actually discussed names. Names! I want to shout back through the years at myself, "Just because you're pregnant doesn't mean you get a baby, you idiots!”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“I have no right to be sad about anything. No right to have therapy from expensive doctors like you for losing children who never existed. There is real grief in the world. There are real mothers losing real children.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“I'd be at work where poeple respected my opinions, said Nick. And then, I'd come home and it was like I was the village idiot.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
“Each memory, good and bad, was another invisible thread that bound them together, even when they were foolishly thinking they could lead separate lives. It was as simple and complicated as that.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from What Alice Forgot
Liane Moriarty
Born place: Sydney, Australia
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“Whether selling a new song, a new food, or a new crib, the lesson is the same: If you dress a new something in old habits, it’s easier for the public to accept it.”
― Charles Duhigg, quote from The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
“The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Black Cat
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