Lionel Shriver Quotes (34 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Works

We Need to Talk About Kevin

Lionel Shriver

Checker and the Derailleurs

Lionel Shriver

The Post-Birthday World

Lionel Shriver

We Need to Talk About Kevin

Lionel Shriver

Checker and the Derailleurs

Lionel Shriver

The Post-Birthday World

Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver: 34 quotes3 likes

Famous Lionel Shriver Quotes

“Giving anyone anything takes courage, since so many presents backfire. A gift conspicuously at odds with your tastes serves only to betray that the benefactor has no earthly clue who you are.”

Lionel Shriver book The Post-Birthday World

Source: The Post-Birthday World

“The good life doesn't knock on the door.
Joy is a job.”

Lionel Shriver

“Change is like that: you are no longer where you were; you are not yet where you will get; you are nowhere exactly.”

Lionel Shriver book Checker and the Derailleurs

Source: Checker and the Derailleurs

“It's an apathy so absolute that it's like a hole you might fall in.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Everything people do that doesn’t work has to be somebody else’s fault. Next time you know, geezers’ll be suing the government for getting old and kids’ll be taking their mommies to court because they came out ugly.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“People seem to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to attachment.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Lionel Shriver Quotes about people

“The existence of other people is essentially awkward.”

Lionel Shriver book Checker and the Derailleurs

Source: Checker and the Derailleurs

“… some people coddle their own afflictions the way others spoil small pedigreed dogs with cans of pate.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“… You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever; who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who are already a little bit good.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.”

Lionel Shriver book Checker and the Derailleurs

Source: Checker and the Derailleurs

Lionel Shriver Quotes

“I thought at the time that I couldn't be horrified anymore, or wounded. I suppose that's a common conceit, that you've already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“It's far less important to me to be liked these days than to be understood.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive it's a vanity.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“I didn't care about anything. And there's a freedom in apathy, a wild, dizzying liberation on which you can almost get drunk. You can do anything. Ask Kevin.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“The discovery that heartbreak is indeed heartbreaking consoles us about our humanity.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“How lucky we are, when we're spared what we think we want!”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Teachers were both blamed for everything that went wrong with kids and turned to for their every salvation. This dual role of scapegoat and savior was downright messianic but even Jesus was probably paid better.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“It's queer how the thing what attracted you to someone is the same as what you come to despise about them”

Lionel Shriver

“But indifference would ultimately commend itself as a devastating weapon.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Only a country that feels invulnerable can afford political turmoil as entertainment.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Lovers communicate not inside sentences, but between them. Passion lurks within interstice. It is grouting rather than bricks.”

Lionel Shriver book The Post-Birthday World

Source: The Post-Birthday World

“Kevin was a shell game in which all three cups were empty.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“I was suffering from the delusion that it's the thought that counts.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“That boy hardly needed a mask when his naked face was already impenetrable.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Funny how the nature of a normal day is the first memory to fade.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“We'd been assured it wouldn't be painful, though she might experience 'discomfort,' a term beloved of the medical profession that seems to be a synonym for agony that isn't yours.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Built like an oak tree, against which I could pitch my pillow and read; mornings, I could curl into the crook of your branches.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

“The secret is that there is no secret.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Similar authors

Frank Herbert158

American writer None

William Saroyan190

American writer None

Ray Bradbury401

American writer None

William Faulkner214

American writer None

Julio Cortázar29

Argentinian writer None

David Foster Wallace185

American fiction writer and essayist None

Pearl S. Buck95

American writer None

Charles Bukowski555

American writer None

Joseph Campbell140

American mythologist, writer and lecturer None

Dale Carnegie98

American writer and lecturer None

Similar authors

Frank Herbert158

American writer None

William Saroyan190

American writer None

Ray Bradbury401

American writer None

William Faulkner214

American writer None

Julio Cortázar29

Argentinian writer None