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No eleven-year-old has any real grasp of death. He doesn't have any real concept of other people--that they feel pain, even that they exist. And his own adult future isn't real to him, either. Makes it that much easier to throw away.
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
Years
Away
Adults
People
Makes
Exist
Doesn
Easier
Eleven
Feel
Either
Grasp
Feels
Year
Adult
Real
Future
Concept
Even
Pain
Throw
Much
Death
Concepts
More quotes by Lionel Shriver
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
The secret is that there is no secret.
Lionel Shriver
Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.
Lionel Shriver
A boy is a dangerous animal.
Lionel Shriver
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
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
I have never in all my life considered you other people.
Lionel Shriver
Desire is one of the burning experiences of human life.
Lionel Shriver
...hoarders of guilty secrets are inevitably consumed with appearances.
Lionel Shriver
Got nothing to do with trying. You like someone, or you don't. If you're 'trying', you don't.
Lionel Shriver
Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.
Lionel Shriver
In the particular dwells the tawdry. In the conceptual dwells the grand, the transcendent, the everlasting. Earthly countries and single malignant boys can go to hell the idea of countries and the idea of sons triumph for eternity.
Lionel Shriver
It is never persuasive to argue that you are not the kind of person who does what you are actually doing.
Lionel Shriver
Kevin was a shell game in which all three cups were empty.
Lionel Shriver
People seem to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to attachment.
Lionel Shriver
Notoriety is cheap. It's just easier to get noticed by doing something bad.
Lionel Shriver
The most sumptuous experience of ingestion is in-between: remembering the last bite and looking forward to the next one.
Lionel Shriver
I seem to remember even from when I was very young that when you loved someone you also hated them for making you love them, since loving someone is so incredibly humiliating.
Lionel Shriver
But indifference would ultimately commend itself as a devastating weapon.
Lionel Shriver
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
