Lionel Shriver Quotes
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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.
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Reality doesn't have to be plausible. Reality can be as preposterous as it pleases.
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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.
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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.
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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!'
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Donald Trump wouldn't work on paper. Obnoxious, crass, boastful, and vulgar, with garish tastes and a Stepford wife - as a fictional character, he'd seem too crudely drawn. Even in a trashy airport thriller, readers wouldn't buy such a boor as president.
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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.
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Happiness isn't a position. It's a trajectory.
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Writers who take on polarising issues are apt to step on a few toes.
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I am bowled over by the massive number of remarkable people who face down the fact that no, they are not going to be film directors, famous artists, or billionaire entrepreneurs and still come out the other side as cheerful, decent, gracious human beings.
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As any traveller knows, heading elsewhere is one thing, getting back quite another.
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Though a fine writer, Scott Spencer will forever be associated with a cheesy, sentimental film starring the vapid box-office draw Brooke Shields.
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In Shaker Heights, Ohio, one of America's first planned communities, order and harmony are prized.
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Trump can't string a single grammatical sentence together, and at the podium, he is lumpen and awkward.
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I'm not a religious person. Chances are that the universe neither treasures nor regrets us.
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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.
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I was born after the heavy spade work of female emancipation was done.
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For storytellers, financiers make ideal rogues. The easiest way to make characters unappealing is to make them rich - shorthand for spoiled, picky, superior, and cold-hearted.
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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.
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Clearly, freedom does not extend to the right to harm other people.
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Ever since Hiroshima, we've been faced with the depressing fact that you cannot un-invent something.
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Publishers like their authors to take advantage of publicity opportunities.
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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.
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Oddly, for a book to do well merely because people like it is surprisingly rare.