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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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Lionel Shriver
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: May 18
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Gastonia
North Carolina
Margaret Ann Shriver
Margaret Shriver
Followed
Rules
Failing
Mother
Ends
Always
Failings

More quotes by Lionel Shriver

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I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.
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Notoriety is cheap. It's just easier to get noticed by doing something bad.
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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.
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You were always uncomfortable with the rhetoric of emotion, which is quite a different matter from discomfort with emotion itself.
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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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Secrets bind and separate in strict accordance with who's in them .
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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.
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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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The secret is that there is no secret.
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I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.
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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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Maybe the greatest favour a spouse can tender is to overlook what you can't.
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How lucky we are, when we're spared what we think we want!
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Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.
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People seem to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to attachment.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Lionel Shriver
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it is always difficult to impress the ignorant.
Lionel Shriver
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Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.
Lionel Shriver