The Husband's Secret

50 Quotes About The Insanity And Brutality Of Love From Liane Moriarty

Marriage was a form of insanity.
Holly Riordan
August 11, 2016
“Falling in love was easy. Anyone could fall. It was holding on that was tricky.”
— Liane Moriarty, The Husband's Secret
Tagged: Love, Staying In Love, Falling In Love
“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, What Alice Forgot
Tagged: Love, puppy love, Marriage
“They say it's good to let your grudges go, but I don't know, I'm quite fond of my grudge. I tend it like a little pet.”
— Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies
Tagged: grudges, Bitterness, Moving On
“But maybe every life looked wonderful if all you saw was the photo albums.”
— Liane Moriarty, What Alice Forgot
Tagged: photographs, Life, Perspective
“Marriage was a form of insanity; love hovering permanently on the edge of aggravation.”
— Liane Moriarty, The Husband's Secret
Tagged: Marriage, Love, Insanity
“Perhaps nothing was ever ‘meant to be.’ There was just life, and right now, and doing your best. Being a bit bendy.”
— Liane Moriarty, The Husband's Secret
Tagged: Meant To Be, Love, Timing, Relationships
“I mean a fat, ugly man can still be funny and lovable and successful. But it’s like it’s the most shameful thing for a woman to be.”
— Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies
Tagged: beauty, Men, Women, Shame
“It was almost embarrassing to be truly intimate with your spouse; how could you watch someone floss one minute, and the next minute share your deepest passion or most ridiculous, trite little fears? It was almost easier to talk about that sort of thing before you’d shared a bathroom and a bank account and argued over the packing of the dishwasher.”
— Liane Moriarty, The Husband's Secret
Tagged: embarrassing, Marriage, arguments
“A woman’s entire self-worth rests on her looks. That’s why. It’s because we live in a beauty-obsessed society where the most important thing a woman can do is make herself attractive to men.”
— Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies
Tagged: Self-Worth, Women, beauty
“Those we love don’t go away, they sit beside us every day.”
— Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies
Tagged: Love, Dating, Relationships
“Champagne is never a mistake.”
— Liane Moriarty, Big Litle Lies
Tagged: champagne, Mistakes, Drinking
“She longed to feel something momentous. Sometimes her life seemed so little.”
— Liane Moriarty, The Husband's Secret
Tagged: Life, Excitement, Adventure
“You could try as hard as you could to imagine someone else’s tragedy—drowning in icy waters, living in a city split by a wall—but nothing truly hurts until it happens to you.”
— Liane Moriarty, The Husband's Secret
Tagged: Tragedy, Pain, Suffering
“It wasn’t logical, but the better you knew someone, the more blurry they became. The accumulation of facts made them disappear. It was more interesting wondering if someone did or didn’t like country music than knowing one way or the other.”
— Liane Moriarty, The Husband's Secret
Tagged: Logic, Intimacy, Relationships
“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.”
— Liane Moriarty, What Alice Forgot
Tagged: Love, Marriage, puppy love, comparisons
“Everyone wanted to be rich and beautiful, but the truly rich and beautiful had to pretend they were just the same as everyone else.”
— Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies
Tagged: rich, beauty, pretending
“Just because a marriage ended didn't mean that it hadn't been happy at times.”
— Liane Moriarty, What Alice Forgot
Tagged: Marriage, Divorce, Happiness, Unhappy
“Wouldn't it be a lot less messy if everyone just stayed with the people they married in the first place?”
— Liane Moriarty, What Alice Forgot
Tagged: Marriage, Cheating, Divorce
“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, What Alice Forgot
Tagged: medication, Women, hormones
“She didn’t understand a damned thing about life except that it was arbitrary and cruel, and some people got away with murder while others made one tiny, careless mistake and paid a terrible price.”
— Liane Moriarty, The Husband's Secret
Tagged: Life, Mistakes, Murder
“Little kids, little problems. Wait till you’ve got drugs and sex and social media to worry about.”
— Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies
Tagged: Children, Sex, Social Media, Drugs
“It seemed to her everyone had too much self-protective pride to truly strip down to their souls in front of their long-term partners. It was easier to pretend there was nothing more to know, to fall into an easygoing companionship.”
— Liane Moriarty, The Husband's Secret
Tagged: Relationships, long-term relationships, self-protective
“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, What Alice Forgot
Tagged: Breakups, Criticism, Awkwardness
“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, What Alice Forgot
Tagged: forgiveness, Mistakes, forgive
“If she packaged the perfect Facebook life, maybe she would start to believe it herself.”
— Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies
Tagged: Facebook, Social Media, Deception
“First kisses didn’t necessarily require darkness and alcohol, they could happen in the open air, with the sun warm on your face and everything around you honest and real and true.”
— Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies
Tagged: Kissing, first kiss, Honesty
“When you were young you talked about ‘falling in love’ with such amusing gravity, as if it were an actual recordable event, when what was it really? Chemicals. Hormones. A trick of the mind.”
— Liane Moriarty, The Husband's Secret
Tagged: Love, Falling In Love, hormones, Chemicals
“This was how you lived with a terrible secret. You just did it. You pretended everything was fine. You ignored the deep, cramplike pain in your stomach. You somehow anesthetized yourself so that nothing felt that bad, but nothing felt that good either.”
— Liane Moriarty, The Husband's Secret
Tagged: Secrets, Ignoring, pretending
“Was there anything better than to be wanted? Was that all anyone really needed?”
— Liane Moriarty, The Husband's Secret
Tagged: wanted, affection, Attention
“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.”
— Liane Moriarty, What Alice Forgot
Tagged: Memories, Black and White, Marriage, Divorce