So Much for That Quotes

“What would I like to get away from? Complexity. Anxiety. A feeling I've had my whole life that at any given time there's something I'm forgetting, some detail or chore, something that I'm supposed to be doing or should have already done. That nagging sensation - I get up with it, I go through the day with it, I go to sleep with it. When I was a kid, I had a habit of coming home from school on Friday afternoons and immediately doing my homework. So I'd wake up on Saturday morning with this wonderful sensation, a clean, open feeling of relief and possibility and calm. There'd be nothing I had to do. Those Saturday mornings, they were a taste of real freedom that I've hardly ever experienced as an adult. I never wake up in Elmsford with the feeling that I've done my homework.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“He'd been unable to discern whether this frantic bustle of hers was what it claimed to be - an ardent determination to live every remaining day to the fullest - or quite the opposite: an evasion. An equally ardent determination to distract herself, from what only she could know, and thus a complete failure to inhabit her life in the scarcest respect.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“The energy it sapped from him, not being able to protect her. You wouldn't think that something you couldn't do and were not doing would take any energy, but it did.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“I have never in all my life considered you other people.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“It was a short session of the simple being-ness that he had long coveted for The Afterlife. What Glynis had called "doing nothing," The smelling and seeing and hearing and small noticings of sheer animal presence in the world surely constituted activity of a sort, perhaps the most important kind. This was a form of companionship that he'd been especially cherishing with Glynis of late: devoid of conversation, but so surprising in its contrast to being by yourself.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“Because when you get sick, I think that’s the hardest part: living in a separate universe from everyone else, like having been exiled to a foreign country.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“[T]he cardboard bookcase of her character had already collapsed under the strain.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“Pregnancy had seemed a reasonable excuse for letting her metal-smithing tools languish, but that accounted for only eighteen months of the last twenty-six years. Motherhood wasn't the real problem, though it took him a long time to figure out what was. She needed resistance, the very quality that metal most demonstrably offered up. Suddenly Glynis had no difficulty to overcome, no hard artisan's life with galleries filching half the too-small price of a mokume brooch that had taken three weeks to forge. No, her husband made a good living, and if she slept late and dawdled the afternoon away reading Lustre, American Craft Magazine and Lapidary Journal, the phone bill would still get paid. For that matter, she needed need itself. She could overcome her anguish about embarking on an object that, once completed, might not meet her exacting standards only if she had no choice. In this sense, his helping had hurt her. By providing the financial cushion that should have facilitated making all the metal whathaveyou she liked, he had ruined her life. Wrapped in a slackening bow, ease was a poisonous present.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“I don't understand why doctors don't advise everybody to lay on twenty extra pounds while they've got the chance. I might not advocate outright obesity, but there's a reason for fat - it's a resource.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“Individually, the experience of most people was of accelerating impotence and incomprehension. They lived in a world of superstition. They relied on voodoo - charms, fetishes, and crystal balls whose caprices they were helpless to govern, yet without which the conduct of daily life came to a standstill. Faith that the computer would switch on one more time and do as it was asked had more a religious than a rational cast. When the screen went black, the gods were angry.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“Un millón de dólares. Racionalmente admitía que un kilo ya no era lo mismo que antes, y que tendría que pagar la plusvalía. Con todo, la cifra nunca había perdido la imponente rotundidad de su infancia; daba igual cuántos otros tipos comunes y corrientes también llegaran a ser «millonarios», la palabra todavía seguía teniendo su aquél.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“So abiding is the authoritative imprint from childhood that this realization might commonly descend years after said parent has appeared glaringly geriatric to everyone else. Yet however routine the epiphany, it did not feel routine.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“There is only the body. There never was anything but the body. "Wellness" is the illusion of not having one. Wellness is an escape from the body. But there is no escape. So wellness is delay.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“How in the face of an end game there was virtually no limit to what did not matter.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“There’s something especially terrible about being told over and over that you have the most wonderful life on earth and it doesn’t get any better and it’s still shit.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“Then the same painless generosity spread to everything in a giddy hurtling rush, like that little threshold you cross when cleaning out closets, and suddenly, instead of agonizing over every heel-worn but still wearable pair of boots, parting with all the junk you’ll never use anyway is no longer a sacrifice but a joy.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“Shep’s plight clearly illustrated that there was no point to anything and there was no relationship between virtue and reward and there never had been.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“At last she got it: concept is incidental; execution is all.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“Is there any place you think is better?” asked Shep. “No,” Jackson said readily. “Of course not. They’re all the same. It’s human nature, man. You give anybody the power to take other people’s money, as much as they want, you think over time they’ll start taking less? Or work more for it, when they can get away with doing practically nothing? Governments are all the same, man. They eat their own countries until there’s nothing left. They’re cannibals.” Carol”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“He could see how this liberating condition could grow progressive. How in the face of an end game there was virtually no limit to what did not matter. Returned”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“—Tiene miedo.

—No me importa que tenga miedo por ti. Lo que sí me importa es que tenga miedo de ti.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“Se supone que los hombres piensan en el sexo todo el tiempo, pero él ya no lo hacía, y ahora lo recordaba con tanta fuerza que dolía.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“Era demasiada la atracción que sentía por ella, pero estaba acostumbrado a esa demasía, y si lo único que quedaba era el amor cálido, en el que primaban la estima y la admiración, sin el amor visceral, el indecoroso, sórdido y animal, él se sentiría inferior, el amor puro y altruista también parecería inferior, y la mera bondad lo haría menor, y menos interesante y adictivo. No quería dejar de sentirse atraído por ella. No era fácil de afrontar, pero hacía veintiséis años que no amaba sólo a una mujer. Había amado un cuerpo.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“—Pero lo más difícil del mundo es llegar a entender lo que «quieres». A mí me parece que eso que has planeado durante tanto tiempo era una enorme crisis existencial.

Otra vez el pasado, pinchándole el cuello como una etiqueta con las instrucciones de lavado, y Shep nunca había sido capaz de entender del todo esa palabra. Existencial.

—Puede que al final resulte que no quiero nada en especial.

—¿Y entonces? ¿Qué harías? ¿Pasarte el día tumbado y dormitando? Mírame a mí. Sinceramente, no es una perspectiva emocionante.

Al contrario, sonaba fantástico. Sólo faltaba una hora y veinte minutos para que sonara el despertador.

—No puedes disfrutar de este tiempo libre porque es algo impuesto —dijo Shep—. Y porque te sientes fatal. Por eso es precioso el tiempo que tenemos mientras nos sentimos bien. No estoy simplemente desperdiciando mi vida haciendo chapuzas con placas de yeso en Queens. Estoy desperdiciando mi vida mientras tengo salud. Y tú más que nadie deberías apreciar lo injusto que es. Trabajamos como esclavos los pocos años que estamos en condiciones de disfrutar; lo que nos queda son los años de la vejez y la enfermedad. Nos enfermamos a cuenta de nuestro tiempo, y sólo tenemos tiempo libre cuando pesa sobre nosotros, cuando no nos sirve para nada. Cuando ya no es una oportunidad, sino una carga.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“—¿De qué me gustaría huir? De la complejidad. De la angustia. De esa sensación que he tenido toda la vida de que en cualquier momento hay algo que olvido, un detalle, una obligación, algo que se supone que tendría que estar haciendo o que ya debería haber hecho. Es una sensación que no me deja en paz, me levanto con ella por la mañana y no se me va en todo el día. Me voy a dormir con esa sensación.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“—Pero no te habría gustado tener una mujer gorda, ¿verdad?

—Sí. ¿Y ahora? Me encantaría una mujer gorda. Ojalá te pusieses como una foca. Me gustaría que fueses enorme. De hecho, por lo que ahora sé, no entiendo por qué los médicos no aconsejan a todo el mundo que engorden unos diez kilos mientras se tiene la posibilidad de hacerlo. No quiero defender la obesidad, pero hay una razón para estar gordo. Es un recurso.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“La ocupación sin pausa era una especie de terapia. La servicialidad agresiva disimulaba el hecho de que, en algún sentido importante, era de poca utilidad.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“Me paso el día sin hacer nada. Sería un consuelo para mí estar con alguien que tampoco hiciera nada.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“Por eso no tenía paciencia para con la descabellada distinción entre arte y artesanía que ponía a esta última en situación de desventaja desde un punto de vista comercial. Una jarra de barro para agua no valía prácticamente nada, pero si tenía un agujero en el fondo y era «arte», se podía pedir por ella un ojo de la cara. ¿No era una putada?”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

“Había algo que arrebatarle a ese asunto de la mortalidad, algo más esclarecedor que una mera perspectiva: apatía. No le importaba la moqueta del dueño. No le importaba el depósito. Ergo, no le importaban las manchas en el pasillo, y arrojó en la pila el trapo húmedo. Podía ver cómo ese estado liberador podía volverse gradual. Cómo, enfrentados a la última partida, lo que no importaba no tenía prácticamente ningún límite.”
― Lionel Shriver, So Much for That