394 Quotes by 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.

How lucky we are, when we are spared what we think we want!

Still, I may have been glad to scratch the dry surface of our day-to-day peaceableness the way Violetta had clawed the sere crust on her limbs, anything to get something bright and liquid flowing again, out in the open and slippery between our fingers.

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 idea of sons triumph for eternity.

I am a wordy writer, and often churn out pages on end without advancing the plot a jot. Hence I try to take my cue from a childhood impatience with any device that doesn't get somewhere. Even in his sprightly youth, Clippity had a problem with running in place—just like my first drafts—when the surface was too slick. As a kid, I was ingenious enough to smear green Plasticine on his rear hooves. Thus I discovered the importance of traction, as handy a concept in literature as for wind-up toys.

Funny how the nature of a normal day is the first memory to fade.

They were determined to find something mechanically wrong with him - because broken machines are easier to fix. p303

Ahora bien, esos tipos, los hippies, sí que eran gorrones. Siempre pidiendo dinero, o robándolo, fomentando el libre esto y el libre lo otro, hablando por los codos del anticapitalismo que sólo habían hecho posible los padres trabajadores a los que esquilmaban.

You restored me to the concept of home.