“I wonder if I wouldn't have been more moved if my own mother had taken me in her arms and said, 'I… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“Maybe it was different for you and Valerie, since you didn't like each other much. But many, perhaps most siblings share a… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
I have no end of failings as a mother, but I have always followed the rules. — 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 Copy Share Image
Set a good example as parents, since the most convincing argument that a girl can become a computer coder is that her… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
The pediatrician must have thought me one of those neurotic mothers who craved distinction for her child but who in our civilization's… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
As a teenager, I ached to grow up even more than I dreaded to. I craved escape from my parents' impositions on… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“We agreed that whether we became parents would be 'the single most important decision we would ever make together.' Yet the very… — 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
“You can blame your mother, and she can blame hers. Leastways sooner or later it's the fault of somebody who's dead.” — Lionel Shriver 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 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
“The irony is, though your parents always deplored his absence of Protestant industry, those two have more in common with Kevin than… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“Kevin folded his arms and looked satisfied; I had gone back to playing Mother. “I knew exactly what I was doing.” He… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
The absence of doll babies in my toy chest didn't seriously influence my later decision not to become a mother; rather, I… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
Whoa, that's the kind of little sister I can dig!" said Edison. "Yes, we're all alike," I said. "We cover for you,… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“No, this mother purled about her duties like a bubbling brook, and any number of stones hurled at her eddies sank with… — 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
“Once I was no longer fussing with my coat, he said, “You may be fooling the neighbors and the guards and Jesus… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“I suspect that children want their parents to be busy; they don't want to have to fill your schedule with their paltry… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“I hazarded to your mother that tragedy seems to bring out all varieties of unexpected qualities in people. I said it was… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
“Children live in the same world we do.To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive, it's a… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
It's always the mother's fault, ain't it?" she said softly, collecting her coat. "That boy turn out bad cause his mama a… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
I realize it's commonplace for parents to say to their child sternly, 'I love you, but I don't always like you.' But… — 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
