Lionel Shriver Quotes
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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.
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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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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.
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Oddly, for a book to do well merely because people like it is surprisingly rare.
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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.
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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.
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The dumbest childhood vow I ever made was to finish every book I started.
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Laws to protect 'public health' are potentially infinite, especially once they no longer have to be supported by any research whatsoever.
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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.
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Formal declarations of mistrust, pre-nups are emotionally unfortunate. They overtly plan for failure, and thus involve a jarring cognitive dissonance.
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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.
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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.
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Ultimately, Hillary and Obama are on the same side.
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Some of the best scenes in drama take almost no time - helping to illustrate that life-changing events in real life often occur in a split second, after which nothing is ever the same.
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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.
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February is for curmudgeons, whinge-bags, and misanthropes. You can't begrudge us one month of the year or blame us for being even crabbier, it's so short. There is nothing good about it, which is why it's so great.
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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.
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A pre-nup is an insurance policy or, in brokerage terms, a short hedge - meant to mitigate a high-risk investment. It safeguards the love-struck from their own poor judgment of character.
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Hypersensitivity has become a weapon.
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Novelists are too often assumed to write veiled autobiography.
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Few Amazon punters will explore a book with the depth of an 800-word review.
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While one can't always begrudge the wealth of people who have at least produced something of value, the rich of the financial world don't make anything but more money. They're not creative, aside from, perhaps, in accounting.
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When we conceive of happiness as a static state, effectively a place toward which we are aimed but at which most of us will never feel we've quite arrived, then the vision becomes exclusionary.
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In my teens, I eyed my adulthood with trepidation, as if stalked by a stranger - one who would seize control as if by demonic possession and regard my fledgling incarnation with contempt.