Lionel Shriver Quotes

I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.

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.

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 parents for you. We never fail to come across with undying adoration, whether or not you deserve it, and we can't take our lives as seriously as yours. We snuffle up the crumbs from your table on the rare occasions you notice we're alive.

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.

The secret is that there is no secret.

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 myself. I had found that "feeling special" was a private experience, and no one else's projected fascination could substitute for quiet absorption in your own life.

In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.

The Web, the great time-killer that had replaced conspicuously passive television with its seductive illusion of productivity.