Quotes from Testimony

Anita Shreve ·  320 pages

Rating: (25.2K votes)


“And so a person can never promise to love someone forever because you never know what might come up, what terrible thing the person you love might do.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony


“A single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go. Falling in love can do that, you think. And so can a wild party. You marvel at the way each has the power to forever alter an individual's compass. And it is the knowing that such a thing can so easily happen, as you did not know before, not really, that has fundamentally changed you and your son.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony


“I guess that's the point of drinking, to take all the feelings and thoughts and morals away until you are just a body doing what a body will do.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony


“If one has a good reputation and trusted, the rules can be bent to accommodate.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony


“His arrival detonated two sheepdogs that began barking even before they emerged at a dead run from behind the garage. ”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony



“I discover that it is possible to be angry with someone who has died. It is possible to hate yourself for being angry with someone who has died. It is possible to believe that you will die from grief, that somehow your breathing will catch itself up and simply stop. It is possible to believe that you could have stopped the terrible thing that happened at any time, if only you had known.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony


“The lying started in the eighth grade. Possibly it had begun earlier, and I simply hadn’t noticed.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony


“If you suspect a problem, there is a problem. Don’t let them get away with even the very first lie. Be vigilant.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony


About the author

Anita Shreve
Born place: in Dedham, Massachusetts
Born date October 7, 1946
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Popular quotes

“You’ve been thinking with your head for a very long time. While that makes for a very safe existence, we sometimes inadvertently inhibit our true happiness when we do this. Life choices shouldn’t always be about the end result. People fail to realize that the small adventures in the middle are sometimes more important. When you’re old, you’re going to reflect on your life and everything is just going to be one big ball of memories anyway. Why not have something worthwhile to look back at?” I hated that this bitch was making a point.”
― Penelope Ward, quote from Dear Bridget, I Want You


“Graham had a lot of trouble with taste. Often his thoughts were not tasty. There were no effective partitions in his mind. What he saw and learned touched everything else he knew. Some of the combinations were hard to live with. But he could not anticipate them, could not block and repress. His learned values of decency and propriety tagged along, shocked at his associations, appalled at his dreams; sorry that in the bone arena of his skull there were no forts for what he loved. His associations came at the speed of light. His value judgments were at the pace of a responsive reading. They could never keep up and direct his thinking. He viewed his own mentality as grotesque but useful, like a chair made of antlers. There was nothing he could do about it.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Red Dragon:


“You are responsible for what you say and do. You are not responsible for whether or not people freak out about it.”
― Jen Sincero, quote from You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life


“On this Thursday, on this particular walk to school, there was an old frog croaking in the stream behind the hedge as we went by.
'Can you hear him, Danny?'
'Yes,' I said,
'That is a bullfrog calling to his wife. He does it by blowing out his dewlap and letting it go with a burp.'
'What is a dewlap?' I asked.
'It's the loose skin on his throat. He can blow it up just like a balloon.'
'What happens when his wife hears him?'
'She goes hopping over to him. She is very happy to have been invited. But I'll tell you something very funny about the old bullfrog. He often becomes so pleased with the sound of his own voice that his wife has to nudge him several times before he'll stop his burping and turn round to hug her.'
That made me laugh.
'Dont laugh too loud,' he said, twinkling at me with his eyes. 'We men are not so very different from the bullfrog.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Danny: The Champion of the World


“Yup, I totally jizzed all over her face from eight feet above. The accuracy I had was on point.”
― Meghan Quinn, quote from Twisted Twosome


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