“ But keeping secrets is a discipline. I never use to think of myself as a good liar, but after having had some practice I had adopted the prevaricator's credo that one doesn't so much fabricate a lie a… Lionel Shriver
“ At only ten a.m., Edgar found himself already eyeing the Doritos on the counter. One thing he hadn't anticipated about the 'home office' was Snack Syndrome; lately his mental energies divided evenly b… Lionel Shriver
“ Membership of a larger group is not an identity. Being Asian is not an identity. Being gay is not an identity. Being deaf, blind, or wheelchair-bound is not an identity, nor is being economically depr… Lionel Shriver
“ Are you chuckling yet? Because then along came you. A big, broad meat eater with brash blond hair and ruddy skin that burns at the beach. A bundle of appetites. A full, boisterous guffaw; a man who te… Lionel Shriver
“ I came to regard my body in a new light. For the first time I apprehended the little mounds on my chest as teats for the suckling of young, and their physical resemblance to udders on cows or the swin… Lionel Shriver
“ But I was beginning to intuit that full-blown maturity was not so very different from childhood. Both states in their extreme were all about following the rules. Lionel Shriver
“ Whoa, that's the kind of little sister I can dig!" said Edison."Yes, we're all alike," I said. "We cover for you, we lie for you, we take the heat for you. We clean up your messes and mollify our pare… Lionel Shriver
“ You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her. Lionel Shriver
“ This pervasive craving to be recognized as special amounted to an abdication of power, an outsourcing of your core responsibilities. I spurned the fawning of strangers, but I did feel special to mysel… Lionel Shriver
“ In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable. Lionel Shriver
“ The Web, the great time-killer that had replaced conspicuously passive television with its seductive illusion of productivity. Lionel Shriver
“ Pregnancy had seemed a reasonable excuse for letting her metal-smithing tools languish, but that accounted for only eighteen months of the last twenty-six years. Motherhood wasn't the real problem, th… Lionel Shriver
“ A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it. Lionel Shriver
“ For women, marriages foreclosed often resulted in anaccumulation of booty; for men, these failed projects of implausible optimismwere more likely to manifest themselves in material lack. It washard to… Lionel Shriver
“ I can’t imagine that I’m supposed to get over it , like hopping a low stone wall; if Thursday was a barrier of some kind, it was made of razor wire, which I did not bound over but thrash through, leav… Lionel Shriver
“ Like so many of our neighbors who latched onto tragedy to stand out from the crowd -- slavery, incest, a suicide -- I had exaggerated the ethnic chip on my shoulder for effect. I've learned since that… Lionel Shriver
