Lionel Shriver

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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 call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her

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In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable

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The good life doesn't knock on the door. Joy is a job

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But keeping secrets is a discipline. I never use to think of myself as a good liar, but after having had some practice I had adopted the prevaricator's credo that one doesn't so much fabricate a lie as marry it. A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed relationship it must be maintained, and with far more devotion than the truth, which carries on being carelessly true without any help. By contrast, my lie needed me as much as I needed it, and so demanded the constancy of wedlock: Till death do us part