Thea > Thea's Quotes

“...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, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“I thought at the time that I couldn't be horrified anymore, or wounded. I suppose that's a common conceit, that you've already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“It's far less important to me to be liked these days than to be understood.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“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, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“I realize it's commonplace for parents to say to their child sternly, 'I love you, but I don't always like you.' But what kind of love is that? It seems to me that comes down to, 'I'm not oblivious to you - that is, you can still hurt my feelings - but I can't stand having you around.' Who wants to be loved like that? Given a choice, I might skip the deep blood tie and settle for being liked. I wonder if wouldn't have been more moved if my own mother had taken me in her arms and said, 'I like you.' I wonder if just enjoying your kid's company isn't more important.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Teachers were both blamed for everything that went wrong with kids and turned to for their every salvation. This dual role of scapegoat and savior was downright messianic but even Jesus was probably paid better.”
― Lionel Shriver (Author), We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Okay, it's like this. You wake up, you watch TV, and you get in the car and you listen to the radio. You go to your little job or your little school, but you're not going to hear about that on the 6:00 news, since guess what. Nothing is really happening. You read the paper, or if you're into that sort of thing you read a book, which is just the same as watching only even more boring. You watch TV all night, or maybe you go out so you can watch a movie, and maybe you'll get a phone call so you can tell your friends what you've been watching. And you know, it's got so bad that I've started to notice, the people on TV? Inside the TV? Half the time they're watching TV. Or if you've got some romance in a movie? What to they do but go to a movie? All those people, Marlin," he invited the interviewer in with a nod. "What are they watching?"

After an awkward silence, Marlin filled in, "You tell us, Kevin."

"People like me.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Only a country that feels invulnerable can afford political turmoil as entertainment.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“How lucky we are, when we're spared what we think we want!”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“People seem to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to attachment.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“I didn't care about anything. And there's a freedom in apathy, a wild, dizzying liberation on which you can almost get drunk. You can do anything. Ask Kevin.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“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, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“That boy hardly needed a mask when his naked face was already impenetrable.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Funny how the nature of a normal day is the first memory to fade.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“I was suffering from the delusion that it's the thought that counts.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“A boy is a dangerous animal.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.”
― Viktor Emil Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.”
― Viktor Emil Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“I do not forget any good deed done to me & I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“But today’s society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual’s value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler’s program, that is to say, ‘mercy’ killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer. Confounding the dignity of man with mere usefulness arises from conceptual confusion that in turn may be traced back to the contemporary nihilism transmitted on many an academic campus and many an analytical couch.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.”
― Viktor Emil Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning