“ To a man and woman, all of her elderly patients had been surprised to be old - which Avery privately regarded as a serious failure to pay attention. Lionel Shriver
“ Although the infertile are entitled to sour grapes, it's against the rules, isn't it, to actually have a baby and spend any time at all on that banished parallel life in which you didn't. Lionel Shriver
“ ...trying to be a good mother may be as distant from being a good mother as trying to have a good time is from truly having one. Lionel Shriver
“ We all do it (or I used to-yes, once in a while, Franklin, what did you think?), we all know we all do it, but it isn't customary to say, "Honey, could you keep an eye on the spaghetti sauce, because… Lionel Shriver
“ In the particular dwells the tawdry. In the conceptual dwells the grand, the transcendent, the everlasting. Earthly countries and single malignant boys can go to hell; the idea of countries and the id… Lionel Shriver
“ Individually, the experience of most people was of accelerating impotence and incomprehension. They lived in a world of superstition. They relied on voodoo - charms, fetishes, and crystal balls whose… Lionel Shriver
“ They were determined to find something mechanically wrong with him - because broken machines are easier to fix. p303 Lionel Shriver
“ I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story. Lionel Shriver
“ I still get plenty anxious. The weird thing, and the unpleasant surprise for me, of proceeding well into the middle, perhaps even post-prime of my career is that writing books has not got any easier.… Lionel Shriver
“ Still, through a complex combination of optimism and longing and bravado, you would round it up. While a cruder name for this process is lying , one could make a case that delusion is a variant of gen… Lionel Shriver
“ For that matter, all this, is there a God? Corlis -- I don't care!""Huh," I considered. "I guess I don't either"."Most people don't! All they care about," he added grimly, "is being right". Lionel Shriver
“ There is one province in which, sooner or later, virtually everyone gets dealt a leading role--hero, heroine, or villain.... Unlike the slight implications of quotidian dilemmas that confront the aver… Lionel Shriver
“ I realize it's commonplace for parents to say to their child sternly, 'I love you, but I don't always like you.' But what kind of love is that? It seems to me that comes down to, 'I'm not oblivious to… Lionel Shriver
“ This is a dynamic particular to encounters with male drivers, who seem to grow all the more indignant the more completely they are in the wrong. I think the emotional reasoning, if you can call it tha… Lionel Shriver
