"Surely no man can reflect, without wonder upon the vicissitudes of human life arising from causes in the highest degree accidental and trifling. If you trace the necessary concatenation of human events a very little way back, you may perhaps discover that a person's very going in or out of a door has been the means of coloring with misery or happiness the remaining current of his life."

“So many stories are determined before they start.”

Source : Lionel Shriver (2011). “We Need to Talk about Kevin”, p.12, Counterpoint Press

“The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create.”

“I like my coffee like I like my women. In a plastic cup.”

“Irri and Jhiqui argued about Rakharo. “You are too skinny for him,” Jhiqui was saying. “You are almost a boy. Rakharo does not bed with boys. This is known.” Irri bristled back. “It is known that you are almost a cow. Rakharo does not bed with cows.”

“Self esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.”

Source : Nathaniel Branden (2011). “How to Raise Your Self-Esteem: The Proven Action-Oriented Approach to Greater Self-Respect and Self-Confidence”, p.28, Bantam

“Be ready to revise any system, scrap any method, abandon any theory, if the success of the job requires it.”

“Every decade has its ABBA; that's the proof that pop will always be around.”

“Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.”