“I read 'The Bell Jar' as an adolescent and, like most teenagers, had n...” — Lionel Shriver Quote

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.

The good life doesn't knock on the door.

Oddly, for a book to do well merely because people like it is surprisingly rare.

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.

As a teen-ager I was constantly trying to please people, which I guess is true of all adolescents.

I am living out my adolescent dream of travel and adventure.

It's the experts in adolescent development who wax most emphatic about the value of family meals, for it's in the teenage years that this daily investment pays some of its biggest dividends.

I am not an adolescent, nor a romantic. I analyze objectively.

A lot of people pass off adolescent depression as something trivial.