Tasha > Tasha'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

“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, 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

“Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.”
― 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

“The discovery that heartbreak is indeed heartbreaking consoles us about our humanity.”
― 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

“I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.”
― 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

“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, Checker and the Derailleurs

“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, 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

“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

“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

“The existence of other people is essentially awkward.”
― Lionel Shriver, Checker and the Derailleurs

“It's queer how the thing what attracted you to someone is the same as what you come to despise about them”
― Lionel Shriver

“It's always the mother's fault, ain't it?" she said softly, collecting her coat. "That boy turn out bad cause his mama a drunk, or she a junkie. She let him run wild, she don't teach him right from wrong. She never home when he back from school. Nobody ever say his daddy a drunk, or his daddy not home after school. And nobody ever say they some kids just damned mean. ...”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“But indifference would ultimately commend itself as a devastating weapon.”
― 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

“That boy hardly needed a mask when his naked face was already impenetrable.”
― 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

“It's an apathy so absolute that it's like a hole you might fall in.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“The good life doesn't knock on the door.
Joy is a job.”
― Lionel Shriver

“We'd been assured it wouldn't be painful, though she might experience 'discomfort,' a term beloved of the medical profession that seems to be a synonym for agony that isn't yours.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“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, The Post-Birthday World

“Just cause you get used to something doesn't mean you like it." He added, snapping the magenta, "You're used to me.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin