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The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047 QUOTES

The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047 QUOTES

1 " In an era of weaponized sensitivity, participation in public discourse is growing so perilous, so fraught with the danger of being caught out for using the wrong word or failing to uphold the latest orthodoxy in relation to disability, sexual orientation, economic class, race or ethnicity, that many are apt to bow out. Perhaps intimidating their elders into silence is the intention of the identity-politics cabal — and maybe my generation should retreat to our living rooms and let the young people tear one another apart over who seemed to imply that Asians are good at math. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

2 " Of course for professional traders on the stock exchange, money had always been imaginary - just as notional, just as easy come and easy go, as the points in a video game. Wage earners like Willing's mother thought money was real. Because the work was real, and the time was real, it seemed inconceivable that what the work and the time had converted into would be gossamer. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

3 " To a man and woman, all of her elderly patients had been surprised to be old - which Avery privately regarded as a serious failure to pay attention. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

4 " Economics doesn't reward nice. It rewards smart. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

5 " Sure...the boy was precocious. But having been precocious himself, Lowell was never wowed by teenagers who could recite the periodic table of elements or whatever. He was on to them. Precocious was not the same as smart, much less the same as wise, and the perfect opposite of informed - since the more you prided yourself on knowing the less you listened and the less you learned. Worse, with application less glibly gifted peers often caught up with or overtook prodigies by early adulthood, and meanwhile the kid to whom everything came so effortlessly never mastered the grind of sheer hard work. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

6 " Someone had to insert a note of peevishness into this hellishly halcyon Keep Calm and Carry On. Generating some reputable resentment, giving voice to the free-floating outrage that imbued their environs like smoke from a burnt dinner - it was a job to do, as Avery's tireless goodwill was a job. With corresponding self-sacrifice, he'd taken on the less glamorous task of reminding the rest that this sucked, it all sucked, it wasn't fair! "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

7 " Jayne was left an only child after her younger sister committed suicide in adolescence (a tragedy, yes, but one whose psychic statute of limitations might have run out by now - not that you'd get his wife to relinquish the trauma , which seemed to confer the special-protection status of landmark architecture. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

8 " Plots set in the future are about what people fear in the present. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

9 " Economics is closer to religion than science. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

10 " Precocious was not the same as smart, much less the same as wise, and the perfect opposite of informed - since the more you prided yourself on knowing already the less you listened and the less you learned. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

11 " Real poverty is about doing what you have to do as opposed to what you want. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

12 " They still want credit for being tolerant, without taking the rap for the fact that you only ‘tolerate’ what you can’t stand. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

13 " If you take that away from me, and every other opportunity to not quite toe the line,” Willing said, “then however many amusing things I’m at liberty to do, I don’t feel free. If I don’t feel free, I’m not free.” I don’t feel free, Willing did not add, and I have not felt free since you and yours jammed this fleck of metal into my neck. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

14 " I've never been shy. I've just waited until I had something to say. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

15 " Yet what best protected privacy wasn't concealment but apathy - the fact that other people simply weren't interested. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

16 " Language is alive, and you can’t put it in the freezer. But "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

17 " Reading is an act of possession. You read it, you own it. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

18 " High rents had priced out the very service sector whose presence at ready hand once helped to justify urban living. For all practical purposes, affluent New Yorkers resided in a crowded, cluttered version of the countryside, where you had to drive five miles for a quart of milk. Florence "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

19 " And because when you die, the world dies, too, at least for you, they assume the world will die for everybody. It’s a failure of imagination, in a way—an inability to conceive of the universe without you in it. That’s why old people get apocalyptic: they’re facing apocalypse, and that part, the private apocalypse, is real. So the closer their personal oblivion gets, the more certain geriatrics project impending doom on their surroundings. Also, there’s almost a spitefulness, sometimes. I swear, for some of these bilious Chicken Littles, imminent Armageddon isn’t a fear but a fantasy. Like they want the entire planet to implode into a giant black hole. Because if they can’t have their martinis on the porch anymore then nobody else should get to sip one, either. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

20 " Speak of the devil. Luella had wandered in wearing what might once have been a stylish frock, but the hem was shredded from her having torn at it, and the sky-blue fabric was encrusted with food. The bloop of her stomach echoed the bulge of an adult diaper at the rear. Carter had grown accustomed to this decayed incarnation of his father’s second wife, but fifteen years earlier the shock had been profound. "

― Lionel Shriver , The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047