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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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Lionel Shriver
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: May 18
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Gastonia
North Carolina
Margaret Ann Shriver
Margaret Shriver
Hell
Grand
Tawdry
Idea
Triumph
Malignant
Ideas
Countries
Conceptual
Country
Son
Dwells
Eternity
Transcendent
Single
Earthly
Boys
Sons
Particular
Everlasting

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.
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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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You were always uncomfortable with the rhetoric of emotion, which is quite a different matter from discomfort with emotion itself.
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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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I have no end of failings as a mother, but I have always followed the rules.
Lionel Shriver
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I have never in all my life considered you other people.
Lionel Shriver
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...whenever a woman describes a man as sweet, the dalliance is doomed.
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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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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.
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Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.
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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.
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Time itself made all things rare.
Lionel Shriver
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[Children] would have messed up my apartment. In the main, they are ungrateful. They would have siphoned too much time away from the writing of my precious books.
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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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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People seem to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to attachment.
Lionel Shriver
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Desire is one of the burning experiences of human life.
Lionel Shriver
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I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.
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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Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.
Lionel Shriver