Quote

[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
Time
Main
Books
Away
Book
Siphoned
Children
Messed
Writing
Ungrateful
Much
Apartment
Would
Precious

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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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Maybe the greatest favour a spouse can tender is to overlook what you can't.
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Secrets bind and separate in strict accordance with who's in them .
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I have no end of failings as a mother, but I have always followed the rules.
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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.
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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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The Web, the great time-killer that had replaced conspicuously passive television with its seductive illusion of productivity.
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The secret is that there is no secret.
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Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.
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Desire is one of the burning experiences of human life.
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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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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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