“I have buckets of sympathy for the obese, often subject to cruelty, ri...” — Lionel Shriver Quote

“I have buckets of sympathy for the obese, often subject to cruelty, ridicule, denunciation, and contempt.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Grieve and mourn for yourself not once or twice, but again and again.”

“It's a game that just takes so much out of you. Every aspect of your life has to be very narrow, very focused. Everything else has to go away. And because of that, I think it's obviously not healthy. The last thing I'm looking for is sympathy.”

“I am the son of a small and far-away nation and the other laureates have all come from different countries from all over the world and we all were equally received here with signs of sympathy.”