394 Quotes by Lionel Shriver

Holocausts do not amaze me. Rapes and child slavery do not amaze me. And Franklin, I know you feel otherwise, but Kevin does not amaze me. I am amazed when I drop a glove in the street and a teenager runs two blocks to return it. I am amazed when a checkout girl flashes me a wide smile with my change, though my own face had been a mask of expedience. Lost wallets posted to their owners, strangers who furnish meticulous directions, neighbors who water each other’s houseplants – these things amaze me.

I never, ever took you for granted. We met too late for that; I was nearly thirty-three by then, and my past without you was too stark and insistent for me to find the miracle of companionship ordinary.

For the living, death is thievery.

They had no comprehension of why anyone would seek out a film with an unhappy ending or buy a painting that wasn’t pretty.

It’s far less important to me to be liked these days than to be understood.

I always prefer socializing at night-it is implicitly more wanton.

There’s no more doomed a struggle than a battle with the imaginary.

Someone had to insert a note of peevishness into this hellishly halcyon Keep Calm and Carry On. Generating some reputable resentment, giving voice to the free-floating outrage that imbued their environs like smoke from a burnt dinner – it was a job to do, as Avery’s tireless goodwill was a job. With corresponding self-sacrifice, he’d taken on the less glamorous task of reminding the rest that this sucked, it all sucked, it wasn’t fair!

Precocious was not the same as smart, much less the same as wise, and the perfect opposite of informed – since the more you prided yourself on knowing already the less you listened and the less you learned.