Truly Madly Guilty

by Liane Moriarty

Two musicians could play the same notes and sound entirely different. Intonation was everything.

Everyone had another sort of life up their sleeve that might have made them happy.

First-world medical care meant they didn’t have to pay for their first-world negligence.

Elderly women were as tough as nails but it seemed that men got softer as they aged; their emotions caught them off guard, as if some protective barrier had been worn away by time.

That was the irony: Her mother loved things so much that she had nothing.

This was simply the wall. Every time you ran a marathon, you hit a wall. The wall was both a physical and a mental barrier, but it could be overcome (carb-loading, hydration, focus on your technique). She swam on. It didn’t feel like she could get past this, but that was the nature of the wall.

You could jump so much higher when you had somewhere safe to fall.