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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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A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.
Lionel Shriver
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Notoriety is cheap. It's just easier to get noticed by doing something bad.
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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I have no end of failings as a mother, but I have always followed the rules.
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 is always difficult to impress the ignorant.
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 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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I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.
Lionel Shriver
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Worse, the deadly accuracy of filial faultfinding is facilitated by access, by trust, by willing disclosure, and so constitutes a double betrayal.
Lionel Shriver
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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
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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
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But indifference would ultimately commend itself as a devastating weapon.
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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People seem to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to attachment.
Lionel Shriver
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Besides, I'd heard too many Karen Carpenter tales at Gladstone PTA meetings, and they often took the form of boasts. The prestigious diagnosis of anorexia seemed much coveted not only by the students but by their mothers, who would compete over whose daughter ate less. No wonder the poor girls were a mess.
Lionel Shriver
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The secret is that there is no secret.
Lionel Shriver
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Kevin was a shell game in which all three cups were empty.
Lionel Shriver
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I have never in all my life considered you other people.
Lionel Shriver
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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