Lionel Shriver Quotes

I could be stranded in any town in the United States with ten cents and within an hour make $20 with the shell game.

Drink promises you everything, but gives nothing.

So many self-help ideas are like meringue - you take a big bite, and there's nothing there.

He reached for his pocket, and found there, only reality

All the things she planned to feel, the way she planned to look and seem, the appropriate things she planned to say. None of them came to pass.

I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.

Your dreams will betray you. Go nowhere on a horse that fades.

It is human nature to want to believe in the wizardry of the magician--but also to turn against him and to scorn him the moment that he commits the slightest error that reveals his trickery. Those in the audience are embarrassed to have been so easily astonished, and they blame the performer for their gullibility.

The rules of magic, my dear, are best not discusses. For once we understand the illusion, we no longer believe it.

You aim at all the things you have been told that stardom means the rich life, the applause, the parties cluttered with celebrities. Then you find that you have it all. And it is nothing, really nothing. It is like a drug that lasts just a few hours, a sleeping pill. When it wears off, you have to live without its help.

Where there's smoke, there's bound to be mirrors.

Illusions are bound to be shattered

I believe in low lights and trick mirrors.

...he took a look at the blond girl's eyes and knew that he must not take part in the rigged game in which the ephemeral passes for the eternal and the small for the big, that he must not take part in the rigged game called love.

If there was a trick, there must be a trickster.

I'm kind of like a combination of a red herring and a fake-out.

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.

The idea that I [should] trust my eyes more than the stats, I don't buy that because I've seen magicians pull rabbits out of hats and I know that the rabbit's not in there.

He could not play the game without hope; could not play the game without a dream. They had taken it all away from him now, they had turned away from him and there was nothing for him now...He was alone and there was nothing for him.

And Alex understood that Scotty Hausmann did not exist. He was a word casing in human form: a shell whose essence has vanished.

One possible reason why things aren't going according to plan is that there never was a plan.

The first job I ever did in the theatre, I was supposed to be a genius piano player. I couldn't play the piano, but you just sit there at a piano like you're playing, and suddenly all this amazing music comes out and the audience believes you can do it. It's the same with computers. I love scenes where there are people yanking at monitors, "yes I'll put you through now," and you know they're just doing that. But you can look brilliant at all this technology. I love it.

One of the reasons I don't like to use the word "tricks" , I do think of them as theatrical pieces, and as pretentious as that might sound, there's a real reason for it. It's not the idea of tricking you; it's the idea of taking you along on this particular journey the way you would in any other theatrical situation. But, hopefully, you're going to be fooled at the end.

The saddest moment in a child's life is not when he learns that Santa Claus isn't real, it's when he learns that Vince Russo is.

We're in a battle for our lives for things that really matter to us. There's a shell game going on like I've never seen before.