Lionel Shriver Quotes

To be proud of virtue, is to poison yourself with the Antidote.

They build their own Hells.

Vice is basically the love of failure.

One thing I'm recognizing more and more in myself - and looking to change - is going down more of a self-destructive path when I feel pain. I'm trying to avoid that as much as possible. That is an impulse, when I feel out of control.

It is curious how vanity helps the successful man and wrecks the failure.

You might as well aim high. Why shoot yourself in the foot when you can shoot yourself in the head?

Nobody's trying to kill you, Deirdre. You're killing yourself.

It is a foule byrd that fyleth his owne nest.

Haste trips up its own heels, fetters and stops itself.

We are the breakers of our own hearts

Some people have a perverse talent; they're capable of shooting themselves in the foot and stabbing themselves in the back at the exact same time.

Under conditions of peace the warlike man attacks himself.

Why wilt thou be so sottish, such an enemy to thyself, as to prefer puddle-water, and that poisoned too and stolen, before pure living waters out of thy own well?

I suppose it’s comfort, perhaps a sense of self-control, doing worse things to yourself than the world will ever dare inflict.

Bitterness is the trap that snares the hunter

When you're rotten about yourself, you become rotten to everyone else, even those you love.

Drew, your enemies can mess your life up,' he said. 'Or they can make it easy for you to do it to yourself.' —Fletch

He dies twice who perishes by his own weapons.

Sometimes I suspect that we build our traps ourselves, then we back into them, pretending amazement the while.

She wanted, with her fickleness, to make my destruction constant; I want, by trying to destroy myself, to satisfy her desire.

Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.

Whether it's overeating or it's overworking or over-sex or whatever it is, alcoholism, drug addition, we push ourselves to the brink and then pull back because it's kind of exciting.

The tragedy in sports is seeing a team beaten not by a better team, but by themselves.

I know what it's like to start something and have it suddenly grow out of control. And you want to get rid of it, because it's hurting you and everyone else around you, but every time you try to do that, it consumes you again.

I feel all those human beings to be pernicious who can no longer oppose what they love: they thereby ruin the best things and people.