“I bask in their heatedness as before a woodstove. My own apathy is bone chilling.” — Lionel Shriver Apathy 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
But indifference would ultimately commend itself as a devastating weapon. — Lionel Shriver Indifference Copy Share Image
Over my lifetime, heavy usage has woefully eroded profanity's power. — 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
I have no end of failings as a mother, but I have always followed the rules. — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
Maybe the greatest favour a spouse can tender is to overlook what you can't. — Lionel Shriver 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
“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
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
I think Britain is a little better at bringing intellectuals into discourse than America, where I'm from. Though I would say, perhaps,… — Lionel Shriver America Copy Share Image
Everything people do that doesn’t work has to be somebody else’s fault. Next time you know, geezers’ll be suing the government for… — Lionel Shriver Court Copy Share Image
“I see now what they mean by "holding your head high," and I am sometimes surprised by how much interior transformation a… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
Authors are free to ignore their editors' advice. I often avail myself of this veto power - sometimes out of a pigheadedness… — Lionel Shriver Advice Copy Share Image
“there is something implicitly uninteresting about the look of a person who will tell you whatever you want to know.” — Lionel Shriver 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
“Still, I may have been glad to scratch the dry surface of our day-to-day peaceableness the way Violetta had clawed the sere… — Lionel Shriver Copy Share Image
For women, marriages foreclosed often resulted in an accumulation of booty; for men, these failed projects of implausible optimism were more likely… — Lionel Shriver Accumulation Copy Share Image
By stereotyping my work's audience as self-involved and prissy, women-only packaging also insults my readers, who could all testify that trussing up… — Lionel Shriver Audience Copy Share Image
“High rents had priced out the very service sector whose presence at ready hand once helped to justify urban living. For all… — Lionel Shriver Life 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 far… — Lionel Shriver Committed relationship Copy Share Image
“And Lawrence was afraid of the main thing. He had a tendency to talk feverishly all around the main thing, as if… — Lionel Shriver Mind Copy Share Image
“I kept scrabbling around in myself for this new indescribable emotion, like stirring a crowded silverware drawer for the potato peeler, but… — 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 with… — Lionel Shriver Children 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
“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
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
“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
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
“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
