394 Quotes by Lionel Shriver

Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon – the smallest of compromises, the little roundings off or slight recastings of one emotion as another that is a tad nicer or more flattering.

We agreed that whether we became parents would be ‘the single most important decision we would ever make together.’ Yet the very momentousness of the decision guaranteed that it never seemed real, and so remained on the level of whimsy. Every time one of us raised the question of parenthood, I felt like a seven-year-old contemplating a Thumbelina that wets iself for Christmas.

This pervasive craving to be recognized as special amounted to an abdication of power, an outsourcing of your core responsibilities. I spurned the fawning of strangers, but I did feel special to myself. I had found that “feeling special” was a private experience, and no one else’s projected fascination could substitute for quiet absorption in your own life.

Mourning the death of strangers is a blunted butter knife experience, bearing no resemblance to the slicing, machete-like bereavement of losing someone you know.

And Lawrence was afraid of the main thing. He had a tendency to talk feverishly all around the main thing, as if bundling it with twine. Presumably if he talked in circles around the main thing for long enough it would lie there, vanquished, panting on its side, like a roped steer.

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.

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.

I seem to remember even from when I was very young that when you loved someone you also hated them for making you love them, since loving someone is so incredibly humiliating.

But many, perhaps most siblings share a private universe tropical with benevolence, betrayal, vendetta, reconciliation, and the use and abuse of power of which their parents know practically nothing.