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.

Lionel Shriver

Categorized in : Children Running Girl

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

jealousy people thinking

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

Lionel Shriver

latter fame country

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

Lionel Shriver

teaspoons holes

But what's so great about being a perfectionist?... You do all this work, and then the stuff you've made just pisses you off.

Lionel Shriver

perfectionist made stuff

Reading time is precious. Don't waste it. Reading bad books, or books that are wrong for a certain time in your life, can dangerously turn you off the activity altogether.

Lionel Shriver

waste reading book

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

Lionel Shriver

understood these-days important

Time itself made all things rare.

Lionel Shriver

self-made all-things made

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

Lionel Shriver

entertainment political country

It isn't very nice to admit, but domestic violence has its uses. So raw and unleashed, it tears away the veil of civilization that comes between us as much as it makes life possible. A poor substitute for the sort of passion we like to extol perhaps, but real love shares more in common with hatred and rage than it does with geniality or politeness.

Lionel Shriver

passion nice real

...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

attachment life thinking

My own apathy is bone chilling.

Lionel Shriver

bones chill apathy

Desire is one of the burning experiences of human life.

Lionel Shriver

human-life burning desire

Got nothing to do with trying. You like someone, or you don't. If you're 'trying', you don't.

Lionel Shriver

ifs trying

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

Lionel Shriver

shells three games

You were ambitious - for your life, what it was like when you woke up in the morning, and not for some attainment. Like most people who did not answer a particular calling from an early age, you placed work beside yourself; any occupation would fill up your day but not your heart. I liked that about you. I liked it enormously.

Lionel Shriver

heart morning people

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

government kids people

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

Lionel Shriver

normal memories firsts

Now that children don't till your fields or take you in when you're incontinent, there is no sensible reason to have them, and it's amazing that with the advent of effective contraception anyone chooses to reproduce at all.

Lionel Shriver

advent fields children

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

like-her innocence mistake

For women, marriages foreclosed often resulted in an accumulation of booty; for men, these failed projects of implausible optimism were more likely to manifest themselves in material lack. It was hard to resist the metaphorical impression that women got to keep the past itself, whereas men were simply robbed of it.

Lionel Shriver

optimism men past