American - Journalist | May 18, 1957 -
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
AlwaysSeemMayBeingReformOff
Perhaps scientists will eventually discover that we are all clockwork bunnies, and our experience of volition is an electro-chemical illusion.
ExperienceIllusionWillDiscover
Over my lifetime, heavy usage has woefully eroded profanity's power.
PowerOverLifetimeProfanityHeavy
Beauty is aspirational - an ideal that mortals approach but seldom attain.
BeautyIdealApproachSeldomMortals
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.
MotherGirlDecisionBabyInfluence
Set a good example as parents, since the most convincing argument that a girl can become a computer coder is that her mother is one.
GoodMotherGirlParentsArgument
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.
HappinessVisionFeelPlaceNever
A manuscript under way always gave me something to do; only while enduring the aimlessness between books was I truly glum.
MeWayAlwaysSomethingOnlyBooks
Happiness isn't a position. It's a trajectory.
HappinessPositionTrajectory
Clearly, freedom does not extend to the right to harm other people.
FreedomPeopleRightClearlyHarm
Laws to protect 'public health' are potentially infinite, especially once they no longer have to be supported by any research whatsoever.
HealthResearchInfiniteProtectAny
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.
SufferingShineWorldYouMoreTake
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Lionel Shriver quotes