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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
Feel
Either
Grasp
Feels
Year
Adult
Real
Future
Concept
Even
Pain
Throw
Much
Death
Concepts
Years
Away
Adults
People
Makes
Exist
Doesn
Easier
Eleven

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That boy hardly needed a mask when his naked face was already impenetrable.
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Half an ear cocked, something in me, all night, every night, is waiting for you to come home.
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...whenever a woman describes a man as sweet, the dalliance is doomed.
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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.
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A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.
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it is always difficult to impress the ignorant.
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Notoriety is cheap. It's just easier to get noticed by doing something bad.
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A boy is a dangerous animal.
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Life is never easy so that is why I never lie about my age. I want credit for every damned year.
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It is never persuasive to argue that you are not the kind of person who does what you are actually doing.
Lionel Shriver
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Time itself made all things rare.
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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Worse, the deadly accuracy of filial faultfinding is facilitated by access, by trust, by willing disclosure, and so constitutes a double betrayal.
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Though it may be more romantic to picture the bereaved as gaunt, I imagine you can grieve as efficiently with chocolates as with tap water.
Lionel Shriver
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Desire is one of the burning experiences of human life.
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I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.
Lionel Shriver