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 Favour Copy Share Image
“I bask in their heatedness as before a woodstove. My own apathy is bone chilling.” — Lionel Shriver Apathy 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 Argue Copy Share Image
Beauty is aspirational - an ideal that mortals approach but seldom attain. — Lionel Shriver Approach 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
Most women work not from yearning for fulfilment but yearning to pay the mortgage. — Lionel Shriver Feminism Copy Share Image
Over my lifetime, heavy usage has woefully eroded profanity's power. — Lionel Shriver Heavy Copy Share Image
Criminality being partially preordained may seem to let culprits off the hook. Yet it also makes the proclivity seem ineradicable and suggests… — Lionel Shriver Always Copy Share Image
A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether… — Lionel Shriver Hung Copy Share Image
You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she… — Lionel Shriver Celia Copy Share Image
For storytellers, financiers make ideal rogues. The easiest way to make characters unappealing is to make them rich - shorthand for spoiled,… — Lionel Shriver Ideal 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 Good mother Copy Share Image
I do occasionally encounter a British business that delivers what and when, and for exactly the price, they promised. But commercial paragons… — Lionel Shriver British Copy Share Image
When you've been afraid of something for long enough and it comes to pass, the terrible thing is a release. For in… — Lionel Shriver Afraid Copy Share Image
You were always uncomfortable with the rhetoric of emotion, which is quite a different matter from discomfort with emotion itself. — Lionel Shriver Different Copy Share Image
“In fact, because the unself-aware—which includes basically everybody—are impervious to uncharitable perceptions of their underlying motives, all these insights you have into… — Lionel Shriver Uncharitable 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 Affliction Copy Share Image
Many, if not most, countries blithely expect their citizens to have carte blanche access to the U.S., "land of immigrants," as a… — Lionel Shriver Barriers Copy Share Image
We are not attracted to people because they are virtuous. In fact, there's something a little creepy about people who are too… — Lionel Shriver Admiring Copy Share Image
“...Remember that nutty little story I told you about the first time I ever went overseas for my junior year abroad at… — Lionel Shriver Abroad Copy Share Image
“Speak of the devil. Luella had wandered in wearing what might once have been a stylish frock, but the hem was shredded… — Lionel Shriver Carter Copy Share Image
A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed relationship, it must be maintained, and with… — Lionel Shriver Abandoned Copy Share Image
“It was peculiar how the more you got to know someone, the more you grew to appreciate how little you knew, how… — Lionel Shriver Romance Copy Share Image
But indifference would ultimately commend itself as a devastating weapon. — Lionel Shriver Indifference Copy Share Image
Ironically, heavier comedians, actors, and the characters they play are actually more sympathetic, and easier for audiences to identify with, than the… — Lionel Shriver Actually Copy Share Image
In the public mind, an investment banker is no longer conservative; he's a risk taker, a gambler in high stakes, not to… — Lionel Shriver Conservative Copy Share Image
“Precocious was not the same as smart, much less the same as wise, and the perfect opposite of informed - since the… — Lionel Shriver Precocious 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… — Lionel Shriver Journalism 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 Motherhood Copy Share Image
“Some people think that asking a question gives them a right to know the answer somehow. Well, it's not true. You've no… — Lionel Shriver Asking 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 Mother 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 Argument Copy Share Image
In my country, we're sufficiently consumed by the concept of happiness that the right to its pursuit is enshrined in the Declaration… — Lionel Shriver Country Copy Share Image
I was terrified of growing up to become the anti-me, maturing into a woman whom I would not recognise and who wouldn't… — Lionel Shriver Growing up Copy Share Image
A pre-nup is an insurance policy or, in brokerage terms, a short hedge - meant to mitigate a high-risk investment. It safeguards… — Lionel Shriver Character Copy Share Image
“The liberation of adulthood as we'd conceived it from below was a pipe-dream; with oppressors deposed we became our own tyrants.” — Lionel Shriver Dreams Copy Share Image
“Not that happiness is dull. Only that it doesn't tell well. And one of our consuming diversions as we age is to… — Lionel Shriver Age 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 Child Copy Share Image
For pity's sake, if you don't take a shine to a novel, there are loads more in the world; read something else.… — Lionel Shriver Books Copy Share Image
