I have no end of failings as a mother, but I have always followed the rules. — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
For that matter, thinking of one's self as exceptional is probably more the rule than not. — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“Likewise, the simple adjacency of warm bodies supplies the deepest of animal comfort.” — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
Publishers like their authors to take advantage of publicity opportunities. — Lionel Shriver Books Copy Share Image
Maybe the greatest favour a spouse can tender is to overlook what you can't. — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
Beauty is aspirational - an ideal that mortals approach but seldom attain. — Lionel Shriver Approach Copy Share Image
It is never persuasive to argue that you are not the kind of person who does what you are actually doing. — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“I bask in their heatedness as before a woodstove. My own apathy is bone chilling.” — Lionel Shriver Apathy Copy Share Image
“Like most disguises, the cover-up was worse than honest flaw, a lesson I had yet to register on my own account.” — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“Casting my own eye down Fifth Avenue as my belly swelled, I would register with incredulity: Every one of these people came… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“Just because there are lots of them doesn't mean that it isn't a privilege to live in a time when you can… — Lionel Shriver Apple pie Copy Share Image
The financial industry may not be synonymous with economics, but it does control a large enough sector of the global economy to… — Lionel Shriver Control Copy Share Image
“I’d no idea that you’d prove such an able apprentice. You were sure to be a journalist, in which case the chances… — Lionel Shriver Journalism Copy Share Image
“Wasn't there only one respectable memento of a man worth keeping, the kind that draws Valentines and learns to spell Mississippi?” — Lionel Shriver Children Copy Share Image
In my teens, I eyed my adulthood with trepidation, as if stalked by a stranger - one who would seize control as… — Lionel Shriver Adulthood Copy Share Image
In the big picture, few of our careers live up to the dreams we nursed when we were young. In fact, one… — Lionel Shriver Accomplishment Copy Share Image
...You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or… — Lionel Shriver Anguish Copy Share Image
“Exasperatingly, we're all pretty much restricted to learning what people are like with the permanent confound of our own presence, which is… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
My agent had warned that, while a fine film would do my profile a world of good, a bad one wouldn't help… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“We all do it (or I used to-yes, once in a while, Franklin, what did you think?), we all know we all… — Lionel Shriver Sexuality Copy Share Image
Donald Trump wouldn't work on paper. Obnoxious, crass, boastful, and vulgar, with garish tastes and a Stepford wife - as a fictional… — Lionel Shriver Character Copy Share Image
As a child, I was always a sucker for anything in miniature, and it didn't have to be a dress: a desk,… — Lionel Shriver Childhood Copy Share Image
“Later you referenced that anecdote to illustrate that my expectations were always preposterously outsized; that my very ravenousness for the exotic was… — Lionel Shriver Anecdote Copy Share Image
“Sometimes things end worse for one side than the other. These 'injured parties' always seem to see themselves as victims of a… — Lionel Shriver Breaking up Copy Share Image
“Franklin, I was absolutely terrified of having a child. Before I got pregnant, my visions of child rearing--reading stories about cabooses with… — Lionel Shriver Children Copy Share Image
“Had I catalogued the downsides of parenthood, "son might turn out to be a killer" would never have turned up on the… — Lionel Shriver Children Copy Share Image
“The irony is, though your parents always deplored his absence of Protestant industry, those two have more in common with Kevin than… — Lionel Shriver Catholic Copy Share Image
Yet Irina had once tucked away, she wasn't sure when or why, that happiness is almost definitionally a condition of which you… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
Most women work not from yearning for fulfilment but yearning to pay the mortgage. — Lionel Shriver Feminism Copy Share Image
...some people coddle their own afflictions the way others spoil small pedigreed dogs with cans of pate. — Lionel Shriver Affliction Copy Share Image
Over my lifetime, heavy usage has woefully eroded profanity's power. — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
But indifference would ultimately commend itself as a devastating weapon. — Lionel Shriver Indifference Copy Share Image
Clearly, freedom does not extend to the right to harm other people. — Lionel Shriver Freedom Copy Share Image
I am in flight from my story every day, and it dogs me like a faithful stray. — Lionel Shriver Dog Copy Share Image
It's an apathy so absolute that it's like a hole you might fall in. — Lionel Shriver Apathy Copy Share Image
“...never lie about my age because I want credit for every damned year.” — Lionel Shriver Credit Copy Share Image
...whenever a woman describes a man as sweet, the dalliance is doomed. — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
