“People seem to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to attachment.”
Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin
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Lionel Shriver 34
American writer 1957Related quotes
“From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus.”
The Ticket That Exploded (1962)
Context: The 'Other Half' is the word. The 'Other Half' is an organism. Word is an organism. The presence of the 'Other Half' is a separate organism attached to your nervous system on an air line of words can now be demonstrated experimentally. One of the most common 'hallucinations' of subject during sense withdrawal is the feeling of another body sprawled through the subject's body at an angle... yes quite an angle it is the 'Other Half' worked quite some years on a symbiotic basis. From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word.
Second Lecture, The Elements of the Theory of Probability, p. 35 (See also: probability space)
Probability, Statistics And Truth - Second Revised English Edition - (1957)
“From Jewish terrorism against Arabs it is a short step to Jewish terrorism against Jews.”
"On three fronts" (3 August 1938) as quoted in * Rebirth and Destiny of Israel
1954
91
Philosophical Library
New York.
“Attachment to spiritual things is… just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else.”
Thomas Merton, in New Seeds of Contemplation (1961)
Misattributed
“When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.”
“To enjoy anything, we cannot be attached to it.”
Context: To enjoy anything, we cannot be attached to it. William Blake understood this beautifully: He who binds to himself a Joy, Doth the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the Joy as it flies / Lives in Eternity's sunrise. What we usually try to do is capture any joy that comes our way before it can escape. We have our butterfly net and go after the joy like a hunter stalking his prey. We hide and wait, pounce on it, catch it, and take it home to put on our wall. When our friends come to visit, we say, "Hey, Stu, would you like to see my joy?" There it is on the wall - dead. We try to cling to pleasure, but all we succeed in doing is making ourselves frustrated because, whatever it promises, pleasure simply cannot last. But if I am willing to kiss the joy as it flies, I say, 'Yes, this moment is beautiful. I won't grab it. I'll let it go.'