Lionel Shriver Quotes

When I was young I asked more of people than they could give: everlasting friendship, endless feeling. Now I know to ask less of them than they can give: a straightforward companionship. And their feelings, their friendship, their generous actions seem in my eyes to be wholly miraculous: a consequence of grace alone.

What I've realized over the years is that I have some pretty good friends.

I thank God I didn't become successful until I was older.

No graduation speaker will ever tell you that the future is anything but uncertain. It never is. But graduations need not only be obsessed with looking ahead; a graduation can be a day on which we turn back and trace our steps to see how we ended up where we are.

Love them for who they are, and what they are they are; they are not you. Good stuff, isn't it? You have to live 73 years to get that.

I feel grateful because I have a lot of love in my life. I found the person I'm sharing my life with. I have a good man.

I love my friends and my past, and it's made me who I am.

Little Zac had it easy - but he didn't realize he had it easy, so he took it for granted. I think going through 'Hairspray' and other projects helped me learn about the business and life in general.

I've grown up a lot, and I've realized that what I need to make myself happy is the people around you.

I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.

I used to get so upset when my parents took away my phone and then I realized it's because they wanted the best for me and my brothers. I have a whole new appreciation for how they raised us.

The older I get, the more appreciative I am of where I came from.

When I was in my early twenties, I fell in love at least 20 times a day. You have to be with someone where you think: if the world was full of people like you, I could not be monogamous. As you get older, you get to know yourself a little more. The older you get, the more you realize what you need. And you also realize how your choice in relationships is influenced by how you grew up. Now I feel like I've explored the dynamic of how I grew up, and I'm free to find someone who's really going to be a wonderful companion.

I think one of life's great milestones is when a person can look back and be almost as thankful for the setbacks as for the victories.

When I would get close on a part but wouldn't get it, I would be like, "They made a mistake," which is not how I think about things now. I both admire it and I'm grateful for the modicum of health, knowledge, and humility that I have acquired over the last 10 or 15 years.

When I was young, I expected from people more than they could give: neverending friendship and constant excitement. Now I expect less than they can actually can give: to stay close silently. And their feelings, friendship, noble deeds always seem like a miracle to me: a true grace.

It is a miracle if you can find true friends, and it is a miracle if you have enough food to eat, and it is a miracle if you get to spend your days and evenings doing whatever it is you like to do, and the holiday season - like all the other seasons - is a good time not only to tell stories of miracles, but to think about the miracles in your own life, and to be grateful for them, and that's the end of this particular story.

My inspiration is coming more and more from the way I feel and the gratitude I feel. The older you get the more humility you have.

We can be resentful of our age, or we can be grateful for having attained it.

I think one of the things about being around for a while and getting to know yourself is that when you do have these positive experiences, you don't take them for granted - you identify them and you make the most of them. I don't know - it's kind of cool getting old in a lot of ways.

It's hard to tell our good luck sometimes. Hard to tell sometimes for many years to come. And most of us have wept copious tears over someone or something, when if we'd understood the situation better, we might have celebrated our good fortune insteadOne can never change the past, only the hold it has on you and while nothing in your life is reversible, you can reverse it nevertheless.

I wouldn't change my past for anything, because I think it's made me who I am. I'm so enormously grateful for all that I have in my life.

The world doesn't go around on love between men and women. Lovers get very little done. But friends do. When you are past middle life - and I hope you have the rich experience of love along the way - don't think everything is all over. Don't regret the vanished cocktail when the stuffed turkey is about to come in. Flip out your napkin and bite into it! Friends you can gather around you in the later years of life are worth the whole thing.

Friendship is the perfection of love, and superior to love; it is love purified, exalted, proved by experience and a consent of minds. Love, Madam, may, and love does, often stop short of friendship.

Be grateful for each moment we have and be happy, but more than anything live it fully.