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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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Lionel Shriver
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: May 18
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Gastonia
North Carolina
Margaret Ann Shriver
Margaret Shriver
Books
Away
Book
Siphoned
Children
Messed
Writing
Ungrateful
Much
Apartment
Would
Precious
Time
Main

More quotes by Lionel Shriver

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it is always difficult to impress the ignorant.
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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.
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...hoarders of guilty secrets are inevitably consumed with appearances.
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The most sumptuous experience of ingestion is in-between: remembering the last bite and looking forward to the next one.
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I have no end of failings as a mother, but I have always followed the rules.
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A boy is a dangerous animal.
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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.
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My own apathy is bone chilling.
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Secrets bind and separate in strict accordance with who's in them .
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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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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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Everything people do that doesn’t work has to be somebody else’s fault. Next time you know, geezers’ll be suing the government for getting old and kids’ll be taking their mommies to court because they came out ugly.
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Kevin was a shell game in which all three cups were empty.
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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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...whenever a woman describes a man as sweet, the dalliance is doomed.
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But indifference would ultimately commend itself as a devastating weapon.
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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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The secret is that there is no secret.
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.
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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