No eleven-year-old has any real grasp of death. He doesn't have any real concept of other people--that they feel pain, even that they exist. And his own adult future isn't real to him, either. Makes it that much easier to throw away. Lionel Shriver More Quotes by Lionel Shriver More Quotes From Lionel Shriver The pediatrician must have thought me one of those neurotic mothers who craved distinction for her child but who in our civilization's latter-day degeneracy could only conceive of the exceptional in terms of deficiency or affliction. Lionel Shriver mothercivilizationchildren The fact that my clothing has been visually available to other people I do not find upsetting. The body is another matter. It is mine; I have found it useful; but it is an avatar. Lionel Shriver upsetbodypeople Maybe the greatest favour a spouse can tender is to overlook what you can't. Lionel Shriver spousefavour The most sumptuous experience of ingestion is in-between: remembering the last bite and looking forward to the next one. Lionel Shriver looking-forwardnextlasts I was suffering from the delusion that it's the thought that counts. Lionel Shriver delusionsuffering There is one province in which, sooner or later, virtually everyone gets dealt a leading role--hero, heroine, or villain.... Unlike the slight implications of quotidian dilemmas that confront the average citizen in other areas of life ... the stakes in this realm could not be higher. For chances are that at some point along the line you will hold in your hands another person's heart. There is no greater responsibility on the planet. However you contend with this fragile organ, which pounds or seizes in accordance with your caprice, will take your full measure. Lionel Shriver responsibilityheroheart The only way my head was going truly somewhere else was to travel to a different life and not a different airport. Lionel Shriver airportsdifferentsomewhere-else 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. Lionel Shriver loving-someoneyoungremember Change is like that: you are no longer where you were; you are not yet where you will get; you are nowhere exactly. Lionel Shriver But keeping secrets is a discipline. I never use to think of myself as a good liar, but after having had some practice I had adopted the prevaricator's credo that one doesn't so much fabricate a lie as marry it. A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed relationship it must be maintained, and with far more devotion than the truth, which carries on being carelessly true without any help. By contrast, my lie needed me as much as I needed it, and so demanded the constancy of wedlock: Till death do us part. Lionel Shriver successfulliarslying Not that happiness is dull. Only that it doesn't tell well. And of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story. Lionel Shriver agestoriesdull The existence of other people is essentially awkward. Lionel Shriver existenceawkwardpeople The discovery that heartbreak is indeed heartbreaking consoles us about our humanity. Lionel Shriver heartbreakinghumanitydiscovery Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive it's a vanity. Lionel Shriver vanitykidschildren Giving anyone anything takes courage, since so many presents backfire. A gift conspicuously at odds with your tastes serves only to betray that the benefactor has no earthly clue who you are. Lionel Shriver oddstastegiving Yet Irina had once tucked away, she wasn't sure when or why, that happiness is almost definitionally a condition of which you are not aware at the time. To inhabit your own contentment is to be wholly present, with no orbiting satellite to take clinical readings of the state of the planet. Conventionally, you grow conscious of happiness at the very point that it begins to elude you. When not misused to talk yourself into something - when not a lie - the h-word is a classification applied in retrospect. It is a bracketing assessment, a label only decisively pasted onto an era once it is over. Lionel Shriver elude-youreadinglying Now, bitterly, with one sweep of the front door, the compassion was spent. To the degree that Lawrence's face was familiar, it was killingly so - as if she had been gradually getting to know him for over nine years and then, bang, he was known. She'd been handed her diploma. There were no more surprises - or only this last surprise, that there were no more surprises. To torture herself, Irina kept looking, and looking, at Lawrence's face, like turning the key in an ignition several times before resigning herself that the battery was dead. Lionel Shriver keyscompassiondoors You were always uncomfortable with the rhetoric of emotion, which is quite a different matter from discomfort with emotion itself. Lionel Shriver emotiondifferentmatter But indifference would ultimately commend itself as a devastating weapon. Lionel Shriver indifferenceweapons Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed. Lionel Shriver dangerousexpectations
