Quotes from Lionel Shriver

I was reminded of the time I got a free upgrade to first class, where I sat right next to Sean Connery. Tongue-tied, I couldn't think of a thing to say besides, "You're Sean Connery," of which presumably he was aware.

So when I said I'd miss him, I meant I would miss what we had not experienced, and I don't know what that's called: nostalgia for what didn't happen.

For that matter, thinking of one's self as exceptional is probably more the rule than not.

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.

whenever a woman describes a man as sweet, the dalliance is doomed.

But many, perhaps most siblings share a private universe tropical with benevolence, betrayal, vendetta, reconciliation, and the use and abuse of power of which their parents know practically nothing

Sometimes things end worse for one side than the other. These 'injured parties' always seem to see themselves as victims of a moral outrage. They never feel simply rejected, but also abused. I've known many women who were great believers in the curative powers of indignation.

The gap between most people's capacity to conjure beauty from scratch and to merely recognize it when they see it is the width of the Atlantic Ocean.

Later you referenced that anecdote to illustrate that my expectations were always preposterously outsized; that my very ravenousness for the exotic was self-destructive, because as soon as I seized upon the otherworldly, it joined this world and didn't count.

It is never persuasive to argue that you are not the kind of person who does what you are actually doing.

I seem to remember even from when I was very young that when you loved someone you also hated them for making you love them, since loving someone is so incredibly humiliating.

Casting my own eye down Fifth Avenue as my belly swelled, I would register with incredulity: Every one of these people came from a woman's cunt.

I wasn't brave, but I was stubborn and prideful. Sheer obstinacy is far more durable than courage, though it's not as pretty.

Exasperatingly, we're all pretty much restricted to learning what people are like with the permanent confound of our own presence, which is why those chance glimpses of someone you love just walking down the street can seem so precious.

never lie about my age because I want credit for every damned year.

In Kevin's book, unwitnessed disobedience is wasteful.

But the one thing he could not have imagined is that we were withholding nothing. That there was nothing on the other side of our silly rules; nothing.

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 utterly uninteresting that I could faint. And that's when you know you're in love; the tedium isn't unbearable, it's lovely.

If I was ever glad to have gone, I was never glad to go.

Though it may be more romantic to picture the bereaved as gaunt, I imagine you can grieve as efficiently with chocolates as with tap water.

I suspect that children want their parents to be busy; they don't want to have to fill your schedule with their paltry needs. Children want to be assured that there are other things to do, important things; more important, on occasion, than they are.

I am confessedly and unashamedly almost fifty years old and never lie about my age because I want credit for every damned year.

I didn't put in my diaphragm' I mumbled when we were through. You stirred, 'Is it dangerous?' 'It's very dangerous,' I said. Indeed, just about any stranger could have turned up nine months later. We might as well have left the door unlocked.

Just because there are lots of them doesn't mean that it isn't a privilege to live in a time when you can buy them for 99¢. (about Mcdonalds' apple pies)