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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.
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
Firsts
Annoying
First
Motherhood
Children
Loud
Years
Broke
Things
Eight
Saddled
Simply
Mortified
Maybe
Sneaky
Year
Prospect
More quotes by Lionel Shriver
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The existence of other people is essentially awkward.
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The most sumptuous experience of ingestion is in-between: remembering the last bite and looking forward to the next one.
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Maybe the greatest favour a spouse can tender is to overlook what you can'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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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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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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How lucky we are, when we're spared what we think we want!
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Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.
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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 was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.
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