Lionel Shriver Quotes

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.

...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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Time itself made all things rare.