Quote

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.

Lionel Shriver

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lionel Shriver
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: May 18
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Gastonia
North Carolina
Margaret Ann Shriver
Margaret Shriver
Profession
Painful
Wouldn
Synonym
Term
Discomfort
Though
Assured
Experience
Agony
Seems
Beloved
Might
Medical

More quotes by Lionel Shriver

Image
But indifference would ultimately commend itself as a devastating weapon.
Lionel Shriver
Image
Size is relative. If everyone is fat, no-one is fat
Lionel Shriver
Image
Time itself made all things rare.
Lionel Shriver
Image
When you've been afraid of something for long enough and it comes to pass, the terrible thing is a release. For in the belly of the badness there is no more fear.
Lionel Shriver
Image
My own apathy is bone chilling.
Lionel Shriver
Image
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
Image
Half an ear cocked, something in me, all night, every night, is waiting for you to come home.
Lionel Shriver
Image
Worse, the deadly accuracy of filial faultfinding is facilitated by access, by trust, by willing disclosure, and so constitutes a double betrayal.
Lionel Shriver
Image
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.
Lionel Shriver
Image
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
Image
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.
Lionel Shriver
Image
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
Image
So many stories are determined before they start.
Lionel Shriver
Image
It is never persuasive to argue that you are not the kind of person who does what you are actually doing.
Lionel Shriver
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Lionel Shriver
Image
I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.
Lionel Shriver
Image
...whenever a woman describes a man as sweet, the dalliance is doomed.
Lionel Shriver
Image
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