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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
Ideas
Countries
Conceptual
Country
Son
Dwells
Eternity
Transcendent
Single
Earthly
Boys
Sons
Particular
Everlasting
Hell
Grand
Tawdry
Idea
Triumph
Malignant

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Desire is one of the burning experiences of human life.
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I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.
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Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.
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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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I first foreswore motherhood when I was about eight years old. ... [Children] were annoying. We were loud and sneaky and broke things. As an eight-year-old, maybe I was simply mortified by the prospect of being saddled with myself.
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The existence of other people is essentially awkward.
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I have never in all my life considered you other people.
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For the living, death is thievery.
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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.
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Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.
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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.
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Time itself made all things rare.
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I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.
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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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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 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.
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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.
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Notoriety is cheap. It's just easier to get noticed by doing something bad.
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People seem to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to attachment.
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