Three Wishes Quotes

“It was always like that. They never said sorry. They just threw down their still-loaded weapons, ready for next time.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“Death was the hot bath you promised yourself while you endured small talk and uncomfortable shoes. You could stop pretending to have a good time when you were dead.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“Baths, she thought, were just like her relationships, all "ooh, ah" in the beginning and then suddenly, without warning, she had to get out, out, out!”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“There was something pathetic about the rejected wife bravely pulling herself together, joining a tennis club, doing a photography course, cutting her hair, venturing timidly back out onto the single scene.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“I remember waking up that first morning and seeing you next to me in your sleeping bag, all curled up, and I felt so…so pleased to see you. It was like the feeling you got when you were a kid and you had a friend stay the night. While you were sleeping you’d forget he was there and then you’d wake up and see him sleeping on the mattress on the floor and you’d remember and you’d feel all happy. You’d think, Oh that’s right, good old Jimbo’s here—we’re gonna have fun today!”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“Cat felt that sense of pleasure and pride that she always felt when she saw her sisters in public. “Look at them!” she wanted to say to people. “My sisters. Aren’t they great? Aren’t they annoying?”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“The bills would keep on coming, no matter what else was happening in your life and that was good because it gave you a purpose. You worked so you could pay them. You rested on the weekends and generated more bills. Then you went back to work to pay for them. That was the reason for getting up tomorrow. That was the meaning of life.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“You're having one of those days of accumulating misery when you argue violently with someone in a position of power: a bank teller, a dry cleaner, a three-year-old.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“One of the multitudes of exboyfriends had been a country music fan and left Gemma with an unfortunate passion for Tammy Wynette. It was like, Cat thought, he’d given her herpes.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“Do you have an opinion on anything?” “Not really.” It was true, in a way. Opinions were for other people. It was fascinating how upset they got about them.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“He has mistakes in his past. I have mistakes in mine. The fact that we actually are each other’s mistakes is irrelevant!”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“Opinions were for other people. It was fascinating how upset they got about them.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“Try not to saddle yourself with too distinct a personality too early in life. It might not suit you later on.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“Maybe it wasn’t that hard to be happy.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“Where was the “exit” sign? Why did they make it so difficult to get out of shopping center parking lots? You’d done your shopping—they weren’t going to get any more money out of you. What was their objective here?”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“There were moments when she thought she might survive. And there were other moments when she would catch herself thinking about her life as if it was a party she couldn’t wait to leave.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“Sometimes it felt like all the people in her life were scavengers, pecking viciously away at her flesh, wanting more, more, more.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“People get pregnant from having sex, Mum. Not from a perfect marriage.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“It was like every fight she’d ever had with her sisters. A wave of rage would sweep her up and carry her high and righteous until she did something embarrassingly excessive. Then it would dump her, splat, leaving her stupid and small.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“They never said sorry. They just threw down their still-loaded weapons, ready for next time.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“The book Twins: Genes, Environment and the Mystery of Identity (1997) by Lawrence Wright”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“The next day Charlie phoned Maxine, and she appeared like the cavalry. “Three!” exclaimed Gemma, watching her rock the baby. “You had three Sals, all at once! And you were twenty-one!” “It was a nightmare of truly epic proportions,” said Maxine grandly. “It was the worst time of my entire life.” “It must have been,” breathed Gemma. “My God.” “Your sister said exactly the same thing a few months after Maddie was born,” said Maxine. “I’m looking forward to when Cat has a similar revelation. That will be especially satisfying.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“She was very professional and not annoyingly enthusiastic, but quite funny and nice. Actually, Lyn thought, she was probably going to be a new friend. It had been years since she’d made a new friend—it was a little bit like falling in love, except without the stress.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“It seemed that at the age of fifty-four, Frank Kettle experienced a terrible revelation. All those bad things that happened on the TV news—knife attacks, terrorist attacks, sniper attacks—actually happened to real people. They could happen to anybody. They could happen to his family. He wrote letters to his local MPs. He talked at length about “sick lunatics” and “murderous bastards.” He wanted capital punishment. He wanted longer jail sentences. He wanted the lot of them bombed. “He’s experiencing empathy for the first time in his life,” said Cat, with a noticeable lack of empathy. “About time.” “He’s just surprised, poor Dad,” said Gemma, who had always suffered from excessive empathy. Lyn had seen her walking down a street of parked cars, wincing each time she saw a parking ticket on a windshield.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“Driving again after so long was an enjoyable sensation. It reminded her of that flying-free feeling of her first solo drive as a teenager. Not nearly as good but then, all her adult emotions felt like shadows, self-conscious imitations of those intensely real feelings from her childhood.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“The two blond ones were identical. It freaked me out!”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“would cry and cry for no reason, it sounded”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“Med School. It was a soap about a group of very beautiful young medical students with shiny white teeth and complex love lives. Each episode featured a lot of blood and sex and anguish.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“Every conversation with her mother was fraught with danger. It was as if they were former players from competing teams who shared a long and violent history.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes

“The only thing to do was to wait it out, to fold herself up inside, to pretend she was somewhere else. It was like ducking under a big wave when the surf was especially rough. You took a deep gulp and closed your eyes and dropped as far as you could beneath that raging wall of white water. While you were under it pushed you and shoved you as if it wanted to kill you. But it always passed. And when you broke the surface, gasping for air, sometimes it was so calmly-lapping-gentle you could hardly believe the wave ever existed in the first place.”
― Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes