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People seem to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to attachment.

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
Steps
Seems
Used
Adaptation
Anything
Attachment
People
Step
Short
Seem

More quotes by Lionel Shriver

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Change is like that: you are no longer where you were you are not yet where you will get you are nowhere exactly.
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...whenever a woman describes a man as sweet, the dalliance is doomed.
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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.
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Secrets bind and separate in strict accordance with who's in them .
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Got nothing to do with trying. You like someone, or you don't. If you're 'trying', you don't.
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The secret is that there is no secret.
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I have no end of failings as a mother, but I have always followed the rules.
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Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.
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The existence of other people is essentially awkward.
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Notoriety is cheap. It's just easier to get noticed by doing something bad.
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But indifference would ultimately commend itself as a devastating weapon.
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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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Everything people do that doesn’t work has to be somebody else’s fault. Next time you know, geezers’ll be suing the government for getting old and kids’ll be taking their mommies to court because they came out ugly.
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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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So many stories are determined before they start.
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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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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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Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.
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Maybe the greatest favour a spouse can tender is to overlook what you can't.
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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.
Lionel Shriver