Lionel Shriver Quotes

everyone old enough to have a secret is entitled to have some place to keep it.

The thing about secrets is that they are usually best kept by just one person. That was the special thing about secrets. Some people seemed to think that the best way to keep a secret was to tell as many people as possible; what could possibly go wrong for a secret when there were so many people defending it?

And when you have it, what then? Some secrets are safer kept hidden. Some secrets are too dangerous to share, even with those you love and trust.

I actually think that secrets are just a part of human nature and that everybody should have some.

Confidante: One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.

Whenever I would get too nosy as a child, my grandmother would say, "When you learn someone else's secret, your own secrets aren't safe. Dig up one, release them all.

Secrets have power, and that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them.

It almost makes the secrets more important, those few things you actually do choose to keep to yourself.

There are some secrets you want to keep to yourself, even if they don't matter. They might only matter if you keep them secret.

When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.

Getting a room's not always enough. Sometimes you gotta close the door.

A secret is too little for one, enough for two, and too much for three.

For secrets are edged tools, And must be kept from children and from fools.

I think my friends tell me their deepest darkest secrets only because they know it won't ever come out.

A long long time ago I took an oath to tell all secrets that came my way. Don't tell me a secret, I won't keep it. I'm against secrets, I'm against hierarchies, lineages, all assumption of special knowledge on the part of anyone in the presence of anyone else is abhorrent to me. I mean, I am a true anarchist first and foremost.

Secrets are things we give to others to keep for us.

I've always been really interested in secrets - how people find ways of doing things without telling anyone else in order to keep themselves feeling safe in the world.

We all have secrets. We've all kept secrets. We've had secrets kept from us, and we know how that feels.

Every relationship between two individuals or two groups will be characterized by the ratio of secrecy that is involved in it.

That's one of the great lies of intimacy, to pretend you know everything - you cannot. No matter how close you've been, over however many years, there remain secrets. I think we all know that - that you don't tell everybody everything.

There is nothing we like to communicate to others as much as the seal of secrecy together with what lies under it.

The only people you can really share certain things with in secret are your girlfriends.

When I wrote 'Before The Dawn,' I made it quite clear that there are lots of people involved in my life who I can't talk about simply because I'd put them at risk.

We are all, in a sense, experts on secrecy. From earliest childhood we feel its mystery and attraction. We know both the power it confers and the burden it imposes. We learn how it can delight, give breathing space and protect.