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The secret is that there is no secret.

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
Secret

More quotes by Lionel Shriver

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For the living, death is thievery.
Lionel Shriver
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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.
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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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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Life is never easy so that is why I never lie about my age. I want credit for every damned year.
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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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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Secrets bind and separate in strict accordance with who's in them .
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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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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it is always difficult to impress the ignorant.
Lionel Shriver
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But what's so great about being a perfectionist?... You do all this work, and then the stuff you've made just pisses you off.
Lionel Shriver
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...whenever a woman describes a man as sweet, the dalliance is doomed.
Lionel Shriver
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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.
Lionel Shriver
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A boy is a dangerous animal.
Lionel Shriver
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Half an ear cocked, something in me, all night, every night, is waiting for you to come home.
Lionel Shriver
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Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.
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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...You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who are already a little bit good.
Lionel Shriver