Quote

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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Lionel Shriver
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: May 18
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Gastonia
North Carolina
Margaret Ann Shriver
Margaret Shriver
Care
Apathy
Anything
Liberation
Drunk
Wild
Almost
Asks
Freedom
Dizzying
Didn
Kevin

More quotes by Lionel Shriver

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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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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 was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.
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I have no end of failings as a mother, but I have always followed the rules.
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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.
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Secrets bind and separate in strict accordance with who's in them .
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That boy hardly needed a mask when his naked face was already impenetrable.
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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.
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So many stories are determined before they start.
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Maybe the greatest favour a spouse can tender is to overlook what you can't.
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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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The secret is that there is no secret.
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We'd been assured it wouldn't be painful, though she might experience 'discomfort,' a term beloved of the medical profession that seems to be a synonym for agony that isn't yours.
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Desire is one of the burning experiences of human life.
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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 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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The existence of other people is essentially awkward.
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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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Change is like that: you are no longer where you were you are not yet where you will get you are nowhere exactly.
Lionel Shriver
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Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.
Lionel Shriver