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" I can't be alone among fiction writers in regarding the world, so much weirder than anything we could make up, as beating us at our own game or in racking my brains over what could possibly constitute a contribution when novels pale before the newspaper. "

Lionel Shriver

Game

Own

World

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" Ever since Hiroshima, we've been faced with the depressing fact that you cannot un-invent something. "

" Formal declarations of mistrust, pre-nups are emotionally unfortunate. They overtly plan for failure, and thus involve a jarring cognitive dissonance. "

" I do occasionally encounter a British business that delivers what and when, and for exactly the price, they promised. But commercial paragons in the U.K. are rare. "

" 'The Feminine Mystique' goads me to gratitude that, thanks to forerunners like Betty Friedan, I've had the opportunity to pursue a career. "

Lionel Shriver

Career

Opportunity

" However unattractive, pre-nups are at least a way round a law that dictates simply because you love someone and share their bed, that person has a claim on everything you own. "

" For pity's sake, if you don't take a shine to a novel, there are loads more in the world; read something else. Continue suffering, and it's not the author's fault. It's yours. "

" My agent had warned that, while a fine film would do my profile a world of good, a bad one wouldn't help me at all, and I suspected she was soft-pedalling the latter possibility. The effect of a truly execrable adaptation is worse than neutral. The stink rubs off. "

Lionel Shriver

She

World

" 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. "

" I am hopeful that the concept of 'cultural appropriation' is a passing fad: people with different backgrounds rubbing up against each other and exchanging ideas and practices is self-evidently one of the most productive, fascinating aspects of modern urban life. "

Lionel Shriver

I Am

Different

" As a teenager, I ached to grow up even more than I dreaded to. I craved escape from my parents' impositions on what I believed. "

Lionel Shriver

Grow Up

Parents

" Few Amazon punters will explore a book with the depth of an 800-word review. "

" Awful film adaptations follow novelists for the rest of their lives. An atrocious movie of 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' could have stigmatised the book, aggrieved the novel's fans, and blighted my reputation forever. "

" In the perfect world, no one would need pre-nups. But all too often, a misty-eyed romancer at the altar transforms into a vengeful, avaricious fiscal predator when the marriage goes south. "

" At the keyboard, unrelenting anguish about hurting other people's feelings inhibits spontaneity and constipates creativity. "

" In the public mind, an investment banker is no longer conservative; he's a risk taker, a gambler in high stakes, not to mention a thief. These people are dangerous - deliciously so. "

" Trump can't string a single grammatical sentence together, and at the podium, he is lumpen and awkward. "

Lionel Shriver

Together

Single

" 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. "

" The premiere of Lynne Ramsay's film of 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' at the Cannes film festival provides an apt juncture at which to celebrate the miraculous power - not of film but of fiction. Lo, I have created a monster. "

" By stereotyping my work's audience as self-involved and prissy, women-only packaging also insults my readers, who could all testify that trussing up my novels as sweet, girly, and soft is like stuffing a Rottweiler in a dress. "

" We probably give newspaper columnists too much weight. "

" When Truman Capote wrote from the perspective of condemned murderers from a lower economic class than his own, he had some gall. But writing fiction takes gall. "

" In Shaker Heights, Ohio, one of America's first planned communities, order and harmony are prized. "

" Letting ourselves down in some fashion is such an integral part of daily life that the paucity of literature on the subject is baffling. "

" Reality doesn't have to be plausible. Reality can be as preposterous as it pleases. "

" 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

Easier

" 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. "

" As a woman, I'd be uneasy about being given the power to determine what is insulting to women in general. "

" Perhaps scientists will eventually discover that we are all clockwork bunnies, and our experience of volition is an electro-chemical illusion. "

" Happiness isn't a position. It's a trajectory. "

" I read 'The Bell Jar' as an adolescent and, like most teenagers, had no problem identifying with a young woman who had everything going for her - looks, talent, opportunity, with her 'whole life ahead of her,' yadda, yadda, yadda - yet was spiraling into misery. "