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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
Children
Loud
Years
Broke
Things
Eight
Saddled
Simply
Mortified
Maybe
Sneaky
Year
Prospect
Firsts
Annoying
First
Motherhood

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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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I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.
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The Web, the great time-killer that had replaced conspicuously passive television with its seductive illusion of productivity.
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My own apathy is bone chilling.
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