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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.

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
Pisses
Perfectionist
Stuff
Great
Work
Made

More quotes by Lionel Shriver

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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.
Lionel Shriver
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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.
Lionel Shriver
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You were always uncomfortable with the rhetoric of emotion, which is quite a different matter from discomfort with emotion itself.
Lionel Shriver
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The existence of other people is essentially awkward.
Lionel Shriver
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Maybe the greatest favour a spouse can tender is to overlook what you can't.
Lionel Shriver
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Half an ear cocked, something in me, all night, every night, is waiting for you to come home.
Lionel Shriver
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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
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Kevin was a shell game in which all three cups were empty.
Lionel Shriver
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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
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My own apathy is bone chilling.
Lionel Shriver
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That boy hardly needed a mask when his naked face was already impenetrable.
Lionel Shriver
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Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.
Lionel Shriver
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Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.
Lionel Shriver
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How lucky we are, when we're spared what we think we want!
Lionel Shriver
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Got nothing to do with trying. You like someone, or you don't. If you're 'trying', you don't.
Lionel Shriver
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Life is never easy so that is why I never lie about my age. I want credit for every damned year.
Lionel Shriver
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...You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who are already a little bit good.
Lionel Shriver
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For the living, death is thievery.
Lionel Shriver
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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.
Lionel Shriver
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I have no end of failings as a mother, but I have always followed the rules.
Lionel Shriver