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It is never persuasive to argue that you are not the kind of person who does what you are actually doing.

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
Actually
Doe
Persons
Person
Kind
Never
Persuasive
Argue
Arguing

More quotes by Lionel Shriver

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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.
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The existence of other people is essentially awkward.
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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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My own apathy is bone chilling.
Lionel Shriver
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The secret is that there is no secret.
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Half an ear cocked, something in me, all night, every night, is waiting for you to come home.
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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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So many stories are determined before they start.
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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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
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Kevin was a shell game in which all three cups were empty.
Lionel Shriver
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In the particular dwells the tawdry. In the conceptual dwells the grand, the transcendent, the everlasting. Earthly countries and single malignant boys can go to hell the idea of countries and the idea of sons triumph for eternity.
Lionel Shriver
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No eleven-year-old has any real grasp of death. He doesn't have any real concept of other people--that they feel pain, even that they exist. And his own adult future isn't real to him, either. Makes it that much easier to throw away.
Lionel Shriver
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I have never in all my life considered you other people.
Lionel Shriver
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Time itself made all things rare.
Lionel Shriver