Quote

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

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
Great
Work
Made
Pisses
Perfectionist
Stuff

More quotes by Lionel Shriver

Image
For the living, death is thievery.
Lionel Shriver
Image
...hoarders of guilty secrets are inevitably consumed with appearances.
Lionel Shriver
Image
Half an ear cocked, something in me, all night, every night, is waiting for you to come home.
Lionel Shriver
Image
...whenever a woman describes a man as sweet, the dalliance is doomed.
Lionel Shriver
Image
Maybe the greatest favour a spouse can tender is to overlook what you can't.
Lionel Shriver
Image
I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.
Lionel Shriver
Image
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
Image
For women, marriages foreclosed often resulted in an accumulation of booty for men, these failed projects of implausible optimism were more likely to manifest themselves in material lack. It was hard to resist the metaphorical impression that women got to keep the past itself, whereas men were simply robbed of it.
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
I have no end of failings as a mother, but I have always followed the rules.
Lionel Shriver
Image
The secret is that there is no secret.
Lionel Shriver
Image
So many stories are determined before they start.
Lionel Shriver
Image
Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.
Lionel Shriver
Image
You were always uncomfortable with the rhetoric of emotion, which is quite a different matter from discomfort with emotion itself.
Lionel Shriver
Image
When Mexico enjoys an economic boom while the U.S. is in dire fiscal straights, it seemed perfectly credible that Mexico would not roll out the welcome mat for unemployed Americans.
Lionel Shriver
Image
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
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
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
It is never persuasive to argue that you are not the kind of person who does what you are actually doing.
Lionel Shriver
Image
How lucky we are, when we're spared what we think we want!
Lionel Shriver