I first foreswore motherhood when I was about eight years old. ... [Children] were annoying. We were loud and sneaky and broke… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“Lo, everything that made me pretty was intrinsic to motherhood, and my very desire that men find me attractive was the contrivance… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“...trying to be a good mother may be as distant from being a good mother as trying to have a good time… — Lionel Shriver 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… — Lionel Shriver 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
“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 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 Copy Share Image
The discovery that heartbreak is indeed heartbreaking consoles us about our humanity. — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“I’m a journalist, and journalists need news. Deprive them of it, and they go a bit barking. Deprive them of news long enough, and… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“One of the things I learned with Charles," said Gray carefully, "was that finding someone like you does not necessarily mean that either of… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
In the particular dwells the tawdry. In the conceptual dwells the grand, the transcendent, the everlasting. Earthly countries and single malignant boys can go… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“The idea is that you don't only have one destiny. Younger and younger, kids are pressed to decide what they want to do with… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
Oddly, for a book to do well merely because people like it is surprisingly rare. — 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 Copy Share Image
The sign that I don't like the book I'm reading is finding myself watching reruns of 'Come Dine With Me.' — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
We speak often of 'destroying the planet' when what we mean is destroying its habitability for humans. — 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 me at… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“I think that's the biggest favor you can grant anyone, don't you? Permission to be dull. I know Henry will sometimes say something so… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“They were determined to find something mechanically wrong with him - because broken machines are easier to fix. p303” — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
