...hoarders of guilty secrets are inevitably consumed with appearances. — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“And there's a freedom in apathy, a wild, dizzying liberation on which you can almost get drunk.” — Lionel Shriver Apathy Copy Share Image
“He was already intuiting that attachment - if only to a squirt gun - made him vulnerable.” — Lionel Shriver Attachment Copy Share Image
“as soon as I seized upon the otherworldly, it joined this world and didn’t count.” — Lionel Shriver Otherworldly Copy Share Image
I have buckets of sympathy for the obese, often subject to cruelty, ridicule, denunciation, and contempt. — Lionel Shriver Contempt Copy Share Image
That boy hardly needed a mask when his naked face was already impenetrable. — Lionel Shriver Boys Copy Share Image
“We shared a sympathetic look, mutually marveling that kids who commit grown-up crimes still have their little-boy sweet tooth.” — Lionel Shriver Sweet tooth Copy Share Image
“We white folks cling to such an abiding sense of entitlement that when things go amiss, we cannot let go of this… — Lionel Shriver Entitlement Copy Share Image
'The Feminine Mystique' goads me to gratitude that, thanks to forerunners like Betty Friedan, I've had the opportunity to pursue a career. — Lionel Shriver Career Copy Share Image
The Web, the great time-killer that had replaced conspicuously passive television with its seductive illusion of productivity. — Lionel Shriver Great times Copy Share Image
“Just cause you get used to something doesn't mean you like it." He added, snapping the magenta, "You're used to me.” — Lionel Shriver Magenta Copy Share Image
“What did I expect, that you would wrap my rib cage with those enormous hands in which horses must be measured, lifting… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
But what's so great about being a perfectionist?... You do all this work, and then the stuff you've made just pisses you… — Lionel Shriver Excellence Copy Share Image
As individuals are best off believing they control their behaviour, the judiciary is best off imputing that control - barring powerful extenuating… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
Yet if there's no reason to live without a child, how could there be with one? To answer one life with a… — Lionel Shriver Aimlessness Copy Share Image
“Whenever I see fat people, they're eating," I ruminated safely out of the diner's earshot. "Don't give me this it's glands or… — Lionel Shriver Eating Copy Share Image
In the era of Venus Williams, girliness and goo isn't the way to every woman's heart. Yet publishers presume that women only… — Lionel Shriver Books Copy Share Image
Perhaps I overemphasized the value of keeping busy… I liked to imagine that I was incapable of doing nothing for afternoons myself,… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“After all, she had announced at our introduction in September that she "simply loves children," Miss Fabricant, with a blunt snub of… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“In truth we are bigger, greedier versions of the same eating, shitting, rutting ruck, hell-bent on disguising from somebody, if only from… — Lionel Shriver Child Copy Share Image
There was a point in the latter 1990s at which, suddenly, every sitcom and drama in sight had to have a gay… — Lionel Shriver Character Copy Share Image
“Why would affluence make him mad?" "Maybe he's mad that this is as good as it gets. Your big house. His good… — Lionel Shriver Affluence Copy Share Image
“And of course Brian was far more upset about separation from those two blond moppets than about leaving Louise. There shouldn't be… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“You know that euphemism, she’s expecting? It’s apt. The birth of a baby, so long as it’s healthy, is something to look… — Lionel Shriver Birth Copy Share Image
“...it's not all it's cracked up to be, having real emotions. I know that with the most dazzling men there have been… — Lionel Shriver Emotions Copy Share Image
“Because let's talk about power. In the domestic polity, myth dictates that parents are endowed with a disproportionate amount of it. I'm… — Lionel Shriver Child Copy Share Image
“For years I’d been awaiting that overriding urge I’d always heard about, the narcotic pining that draws childless women ineluctably to strangers’… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“It must be this overarching commitment to what is really an abstraction, to one's children right or wrong, that can be even… — Lionel Shriver Abstraction Copy Share Image
There is one province in which, sooner or later, virtually everyone gets dealt a leading role--hero, heroine, or villain… Unlike the slight… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“I came to regard my body in a new light. For the first time I apprehended the little mounds on my chest… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
