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" Certainly, critics are not all created equal. "
Lionel Shriver
Certainly
Created
Critics
Related Quotes:
" In my country, we're sufficiently consumed by the concept of happiness that the right to its pursuit is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. But what is happiness? "
Lionel Shriver
Happiness
Independence
Right
" Edith Wharton was a natural story-teller. As plots do in real life, hers flow directly from character. Her prose is so effortlessly elegant that you're rarely aware as they purl by that the sentences are so pretty. More concerned with what is put than how it is put, she also understood that you only say anything at all when you say it well. "
Lionel Shriver
Life
You
Character
" Criminality being partially preordained may seem to let culprits off the hook. Yet it also makes the proclivity seem ineradicable and suggests that reform is unlikely: once a baddie, always a baddie. "
Lionel Shriver
Reform
Off
May
" As a child, I was always a sucker for anything in miniature, and it didn't have to be a dress: a desk, a Matchbox truck. Perhaps a childhood attraction to shrunken but compellingly realistic facsimiles is commonplace, if only because children themselves are compellingly realistic facsimiles of the giants who rule their world. "
Lionel Shriver
World
Child
Childhood
" The daughter of an ordained minister, I had been forced to go to church since I was a toddler. I hated church and resented being forced to recite the Apostle's Creed, mumbling, 'I believe... ' when I didn't. "
Lionel Shriver
Go
I Believe
Believe
" In economics, 'competitiveness' does not describe Barack Obama's insistence on not only being president of the U.S. but also beating his staff at bowling. "
Lionel Shriver
President
Economics
Bowling
" As any traveller knows, heading elsewhere is one thing, getting back quite another. "
Lionel Shriver
Knows
Back
Getting
" In the era of Venus Williams, girliness and goo isn't the way to every woman's heart. Yet publishers presume that women only buy a book that looks soft and that appears to be all about women, even if it isn't. Yet women, unlike men, buy books by and about both sexes. "
Lionel Shriver
Heart
Women
Woman
" Reading time is precious. Don't waste it. Reading bad books, or books that are wrong for a certain time in your life, can dangerously turn you off the activity altogether. "
Lionel Shriver
You
Life
Time
" Though a fine writer, Scott Spencer will forever be associated with a cheesy, sentimental film starring the vapid box-office draw Brooke Shields. "
Lionel Shriver
Writer
Will
Film
" Life's most underrated emotion is self-pity. "
Lionel Shriver
Self-Pity
Emotion
Life
" Dieting is odious and can require years of determination and sacrifice. I entirely understand the impulse to say, 'Screw it,' and have another piece of cake. "
Lionel Shriver
Sacrifice
Say
Determination
" I think Britain is a little better at bringing intellectuals into discourse than America, where I'm from. Though I would say, perhaps, that the U.K. prefers its intellectualism to be entertaining. "
Lionel Shriver
Say
Discourse
Better
" Over my lifetime, heavy usage has woefully eroded profanity's power. "
Lionel Shriver
Profanity
Heavy
Lifetime
" A Trump presidency feels as if we've crawled between the covers of a really crummy book. "
Lionel Shriver
Book
Trump
Really
" Laws to protect 'public health' are potentially infinite, especially once they no longer have to be supported by any research whatsoever. "
Lionel Shriver
Health
Research
Any
" Happiness isn't a position. It's a trajectory. "
Lionel Shriver
Trajectory
Position
Happiness
" Authors are free to ignore their editors' advice. I often avail myself of this veto power - sometimes out of a pigheadedness for which I'll pay the price. "
Lionel Shriver
Free
Power
Advice
" As individuals are best off believing they control their behaviour, the judiciary is best off imputing that control - barring powerful extenuating factors such as mental illness. "
Lionel Shriver
Powerful
Control
Best
" Ironically, heavier comedians, actors, and the characters they play are actually more sympathetic, and easier for audiences to identify with, than the svelte. "
Lionel Shriver
Play
More
Easier
" Oddly, for a book to do well merely because people like it is surprisingly rare. "
Lionel Shriver
Because
Like
Well
" The dumbest childhood vow I ever made was to finish every book I started. "
Lionel Shriver
Finish
Started
Book
" The absence of doll babies in my toy chest didn't seriously influence my later decision not to become a mother; rather, I disdained Hasbro's Baby Alive wetting doll because I was already the kind of girl who would grow up to be childless by choice. "
Lionel Shriver
Girl
Mother
Decision
" Hypersensitivity has become a weapon. "
Lionel Shriver
Become
Weapon
" Hungry for both fantasy and inspiration, readers crave protagonists who, after overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles, triumph at the end of the day. "
Lionel Shriver
Day
Triumph
End
" There was a point in the latter 1990s at which, suddenly, every sitcom and drama in sight had to have a gay or lesbian character or couple. That was good news as a voucher of the success of the gay rights movement, but it still grew a bit tiresome: 'Look at us! Our show is so hip, one of the characters is homosexual!' "
Lionel Shriver
Success
Look
Good
" A manuscript under way always gave me something to do; only while enduring the aimlessness between books was I truly glum. "
Lionel Shriver
Something
Always
Only
" When my novels are packaged as exclusively for women, I'm not only cut off from a vital portion of my audience but clearly labelled as an author the literary establishment is free to dismiss. "
Lionel Shriver
Only
Off
Free
" At the keyboard, unrelenting anguish about hurting other people's feelings inhibits spontaneity and constipates creativity. "
Lionel Shriver
Keyboard
People
Feelings
" I'm sometimes asked if I get bored with talking about 'Kevin,' and of course, the short answer is yes. Nevertheless, after a long slog in the literary trenches, I never take a single reader for granted and always remind myself that for new readers the unfolding story is fresh. "
Lionel Shriver
Short
New
Long