Liane Moriarty

We were so happy.

I remember thinking about how mothers were prepared to run into burning buildings to save their children's lives. I thought I should be able to go through a bit more suffering, a bit more inconvenience to give my children life. It made me feel noble. But now I realize I'm a crazy woman running into a burning house for children who don't exist.

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.

Only a man could come up with something so ruthless, so essentially stupid and yet brutally effective.

I didn't have enough other people in my life to cover the loss of this many people at once. I didn't have spare aunties or cousins or grandparents. I didn't have backup. I didn't have insurance to cover a loss like this.

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.

In those years when their mother disappeared into herself, and old Mrs Jeffrey next door turned into Frannie, their honorary grandmother, Alice also taught herself how to change light bulbs, fix running toilets and cook chops and veggies while Elisabeth learned how to demand refunds, pay bills, fill in forms and talk to strangers.

Why did they all have to tread so very delicately around Celeste's money? It was like wealth was an embarrassing medical condition. It was the same with Celeste's beauty. Strangers gave Celeste the same furtive looks they gave to people with missing limbs, and if Madeline ever mentioned Celeste's looks, Celeste responded with something like shame. "Shhh," she'd say, looking around fearfully in case someone overheard. Everyone wanted to be rich and beautiful, but the truly rich and beautiful had to pretend they were just the same as everyone else. Oh, it was a funny old world.

What are you babbling on about, woman?" sighed Chloe. She'd picked this phrase up from her father and imitated his weary tone perfectly. They'd made the mistake of laughing the first time she did it, so she'd kept it up, and said it just often enough, and with perfect timing, so that they couldn't help but keep laughing.

She felt hot liquid anger suddenly cool and harden into something powerful and immovable.

When you divorce someone, you divorce their whole family.

Every marriage, every family, has its mysteries.

You think terrible things happened on the battlefields, but terrible things happened in ordinary suburban homes.

You can think something is one way all your life, and it turns out you're wrong, it can be something else entirely.

Women always reveal their deepest secrets to each other.

Nothing is rigid. Things change. You can change your mind. You can change your thinking.

People can do what they like in the privacy of their own homes.

Not all mysteries are meant to be solved. Not all secrets are meant to be told.