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" 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. "

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" The financial industry may not be synonymous with economics, but it does control a large enough sector of the global economy to sink us all, as was unnervingly demonstrated in 2008. "

Lionel Shriver

Control

Economics

Enough

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

Lionel Shriver

Together

Single

" In grad school, I took a workshop with Scott Spencer, whose excellent novel 'Endless Love' had just been turned into a film. We students were in awe of his prestige. Yet Scott himself was chagrined; for good reason, he hated the movie. "

" 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? "

" For the left-leaning, political identity is liable to be closely intertwined with personal identity. The left is collusive, if not presumptuous: should you get on well with leftists at a party, they will blithely assume that you share the same views on the invasion of Iraq, even if all you've talked about is the canapes. "

" What a good novelist does with a throwaway that serves no fictional purpose is throw it away. "

" I guess I understand a public intellectual to be somebody who moves public discourse forward: someone who either says something new or says something that everybody knows to be true but is afraid to express. "

" A manuscript under way always gave me something to do; only while enduring the aimlessness between books was I truly glum. "

" 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

I Believe

Believe

" 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

" I might defend the reviewing trade, but a handful of haughty hired hands no longer having the last word on books is not a bad thing. "

" 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. "

" Weight having become politicised, anyone with a profile in the media who either subscribes to or departs from the template of tininess implicitly represents a constituency, whether they want to or not. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I was born after the heavy spade work of female emancipation was done. "

" Hypersensitivity has become a weapon. "

Lionel Shriver

Become

Weapon

" Though a fine writer, Scott Spencer will forever be associated with a cheesy, sentimental film starring the vapid box-office draw Brooke Shields. "

" Publishers like their authors to take advantage of publicity opportunities. "

Lionel Shriver

Opportunities

Take Advantage

" A Trump presidency feels as if we've crawled between the covers of a really crummy book. "

" We speak often of 'destroying the planet' when what we mean is destroying its habitability for humans. "

" Trump is not charismatic. He is artless and politically clumsy and wears his egotism on his sleeve. "

Lionel Shriver

His

Egotism

" '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

" I owe thanks to a thoughtful, sophisticated readership hungry for challenging subject matter, for honest portrayals of parenthood, and for fiction whose meaning is neither obvious nor morally pat. "

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

" 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. "

" Ultimately, Hillary and Obama are on the same side. "

" Certainly, critics are not all created equal. "

" 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. "