The Silent Patient Quotes

“I was on a quest to help myself. I believe the same is true for most people who go into mental health. We are drawn to this particular profession because we are damaged - we study psychology to heal ourselves. Whether we are prepared to admit this or not is another question.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

“You know, Theo, one of the hardest things to admit is that we weren't loved when we needed it most. It's a terrible feeling, the pain of not being loved.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

“Love that doesn't include honest doesn't deserve to be called love.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

“before memory. We like to think of ourselves as emerging from this primordial fog with our characters fully formed, like Aphrodite rising perfect from the sea foam. But thanks to increasing research into the development of the brain, we know this is not the case. We are born with a brain half-formed—more like a muddy lump of clay than a divine Olympian. As the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott put it, “There is no such thing as a baby.” The development of our personalities doesn’t take place in isolation, but in relationship with others—we are shaped and completed by unseen, unremembered forces; namely, our parents.
This is frightening, for obvious reasons. Who knows what indignities we suffered, what torments and abuses, in this land before memory? Our character was formed without our even knowing it. In my case, I grew up feeling edgy, afraid; anxious. This anxiety seemed to predate my existence and exist independently of me. But I suspect it originated in my relationship with my father, around whom I was never safe.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

“I’ve never been that comfortable with words—I always think in pictures, express myself with images”
― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

“That's the truth. I didn't kill Gabriel. He killed me.

All I did was pull the trigger.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

“Ali prava ljubav je vrlo tiha, vrlo mirna. Dosadna je, ako se promatra iz perspektive velike drame. Ljubav je duboka i mirna - i konstantna.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

“You want Alicia to feel, yes. But remember, with greater feeling comes greater danger.”
― Alex Michaelides

“But it is impossible for someone who was not abused to become an abuser. No one is born evil. As Winnicott put it, "A baby cannot hate the mother, without the mother first hating the baby." As babies, we are innocent sponges, blank slates, with only the most basic needs present: to eat, shit, love, and be loved. But something goes wrong, depending on the circumstances into which we are born,”
― Alex Michaelides

“It's a shame you didn't know her then.
She was the most interesting person I've ever met. Most people aren't alive, you know, not really sleepwalking their way through life. But Alicia was so intensely alive.... It was hard to take your eyes off her." Jean-Felix turned his head back to the painting and gazed at Alicia's naked body. "So beautiful.”
― Alex Michaelides