"The Web, the great time-killer that had replaced conspicuously passive television with its seductive illusion of productivity."
- Lionel Shriver
"In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable."
"This pervasive craving to be recognized as special amounted to an abdication of power, an outsourcing of your core responsibilities. I spurned the fawning of strangers, but I did feel special to mysel..."
"The secret is that there is no secret."
"You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her."
"Whoa, that's the kind of little sister I can dig!" said Edison."Yes, we're all alike," I said. "We cover for you, we lie for you, we take the heat for you. We clean up your messes and mollify our pare..."
"But I was beginning to intuit that full-blown maturity was not so very different from childhood. Both states in their extreme were all about following the rules."
"I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not."