Quote

Giving anyone anything takes courage, since so many presents backfire. A gift conspicuously at odds with your tastes serves only to betray that the benefactor has no earthly clue who you are.

Lionel Shriver

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Lionel Shriver
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: May 18
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Gastonia
North Carolina
Margaret Ann Shriver
Margaret Shriver
Takes
Presents
Since
Clue
Anyone
Serves
Backfire
Anything
Betray
Conspicuously
Many
Odds
Benefactor
Giving
Gift
Benefactors
Taste
Earthly
Courage
Tastes

More quotes by Lionel Shriver

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For women, marriages foreclosed often resulted in an accumulation of booty for men, these failed projects of implausible optimism were more likely to manifest themselves in material lack. It was hard to resist the metaphorical impression that women got to keep the past itself, whereas men were simply robbed of it.
Lionel Shriver
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Secrets bind and separate in strict accordance with who's in them .
Lionel Shriver
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The pediatrician must have thought me one of those neurotic mothers who craved distinction for her child but who in our civilization's latter-day degeneracy could only conceive of the exceptional in terms of deficiency or affliction.
Lionel Shriver
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Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.
Lionel Shriver
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How lucky we are, when we're spared what we think we want!
Lionel Shriver
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The Web, the great time-killer that had replaced conspicuously passive television with its seductive illusion of productivity.
Lionel Shriver
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I have no end of failings as a mother, but I have always followed the rules.
Lionel Shriver
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Besides, I'd heard too many Karen Carpenter tales at Gladstone PTA meetings, and they often took the form of boasts. The prestigious diagnosis of anorexia seemed much coveted not only by the students but by their mothers, who would compete over whose daughter ate less. No wonder the poor girls were a mess.
Lionel Shriver
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I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.
Lionel Shriver
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I didn't care about anything. And there's a freedom in apathy, a wild, dizzying liberation on which you can almost get drunk. You can do anything. Ask Kevin.
Lionel Shriver
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I first foreswore motherhood when I was about eight years old. ... [Children] were annoying. We were loud and sneaky and broke things. As an eight-year-old, maybe I was simply mortified by the prospect of being saddled with myself.
Lionel Shriver
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We'd been assured it wouldn't be painful, though she might experience 'discomfort,' a term beloved of the medical profession that seems to be a synonym for agony that isn't yours.
Lionel Shriver
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When Mexico enjoys an economic boom while the U.S. is in dire fiscal straights, it seemed perfectly credible that Mexico would not roll out the welcome mat for unemployed Americans.
Lionel Shriver
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It isn't very nice to admit, but domestic violence has its uses. So raw and unleashed, it tears away the veil of civilization that comes between us as much as it makes life possible. A poor substitute for the sort of passion we like to extol perhaps, but real love shares more in common with hatred and rage than it does with geniality or politeness.
Lionel Shriver
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We are not attracted to people because they are virtuous. In fact, there's something a little creepy about people who are too good. There is a big draw to people who are successful at breaking the rules. That means we end up admiring a lot of people that we think we shouldn't.
Lionel Shriver
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That boy hardly needed a mask when his naked face was already impenetrable.
Lionel Shriver
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So many stories are determined before they start.
Lionel Shriver
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Got nothing to do with trying. You like someone, or you don't. If you're 'trying', you don't.
Lionel Shriver
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My own apathy is bone chilling.
Lionel Shriver
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Kevin was a shell game in which all three cups were empty.
Lionel Shriver