Quotes from Lionel Shriver

They still want credit for being tolerant, without taking the rap for the fact that you only 'tolerate' what you can't stand.

Uma mentira bem construída é montada em grande parte com os blocos de fatos, que podem erguer tanto uma pirâmide quanto uma plataforma.

Soy de la opinión de que en la ceguera hacia la belleza no hay nada que implique necesariamente una ceguera hacia la fealdad, por la que Kevin ha desarrollado desde siempre una notable sensibilidad. Es muy posible que la existencia de tantos y tan diferentes matices entre lo sórdido y lo exquisito tenga por objeto que ni al espíritu más ruin se le niegue todo refinamiento.

A los profesores se les culpaba de cualquier cosa que funcionara mal con los muchachos y a la vez se recurría a ellos como si fueran los únicos capaces de salvarlos. Ese doble papel de chivo expiatorio y salvador era a todas luces mesiánico, con la única diferencia de que, probablemente, Jesús estaba mejor pagado.

A ver si te entiendo. Dices que no crees su relato porque es demasiado creíble. —En efecto —asentí tranquilamente—, Kevin puede ser un chico intrigante y malicioso, pero su profesora de lengua está en lo cierto: es agudo como un estilete. —¿Te pareció que se moría de ganas de salir a declarar? —¡Claro que no! Es un genio.

No, this mother purled about her duties like a bubbling brook, and any number of stones hurled at her eddies sank with a harmless rattle to her bed.

La paternidad es el pago de una deuda. Pero… ¿quién quiere pagar una deuda de la que puede escaparse? En apariencia, quienes no tienen hijos se libran con alguna artimaña. Además, ¿de qué sirve pagar una deuda a quien no se la debes? Sólo la madre más retorcida siente compensados sus desvelos por el hecho de que, finalmente, la vida de su hija resulte tan horrorosa como la suya.

Everything works, doesn't it? At least if you're white and middle class. So it must often seem to young people that they're not needed. In a sense, it's as if there's nothing more to do.

This is a dynamic particular to encounters with male drivers, who seem to grow all the more indignant the more completely they are in the wrong. I think the emotional reasoning, if you can call it that, is transitive: You make me feel bad; feeling bad makes me mad; ergo, you make me mad.

Kevin nació en 1984… Un año muy temido, como recordarás; y, aunque yo me burlaba mucho de todos aquellos que se tomaban en serio la arbitraria elección de George Orwell para título de su obra, esa fecha marcó para mí el inicio de una tiranía.

Take care of the components, ad the sum of their parts unfolds as if by magic.

She submitted that Western society seemed to promote longevity at any cost, whereas a shorter life vibrant to its very end was surely more desirable than blighting a fine and fruitful existence with protracted decay.

Likewise the innards of my sole telephone socket are disgorged; my uncertain connection to the outside world dangles by two poorly soldered wires, and it often cuts off.

There's a freedom in apathy, a wild, dizzying liberation on which you can almost get drunk.

In truth, we are bigger, greedier versions of the same eating, shitting, rutting ruck, hell-bent on disguising from somebody, if only from a three-year-old, that pretty much all we do is eat and shit and rut. The secret is there is no secret. That is what we really wish to keep from our kids, and its suppression is the true collusion of adulthood, the pact we make, the Talmud we protect.

Our house had not been spurted with the Day-Glo spray of spontaneous outrage but slathered with a hatred that had reduced until it was thick and savorous, like a fine French sauce.

Only a country that feels invulnerable can afford political turmoil as entertainment. But having come so close

Are we talking a white dress and reception? Because I've been to loads of weddings, and I've had it. Friends resent the plane tickets and hotel bills; the happy couple resents the catering. Both parties think they're doing the other a huge favor. The hoo-ha is over before you know it, and all anyone's got to show for it is a hangover. Weddings are a racket, and the only people who profit are florists and bartenders.

Men have always gotten to name children after themselves, while not doing any of the work.

I want to let all this go when it still hurts to let it go. When we can still feel a sense of loss. When what we're losing is still whole, and not corrupted, and diminished, and made dreadfully sad.

The romances between strangers are somewhere between inaccessible and incomprehensible to other people...

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!

I believe the impulse to write comes out of a failure to communicate by any other means.

Of course for professional traders on the stock exchange, money had always been imaginary - just as notional, just as easy come and easy go, as the points in a video game. Wage earners like Willing's mother thought money was real. Because the work was real, and the time was real, it seemed inconceivable that what the work and the time had converted into would be gossamer.