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1 " The Web, the great time-killer that had replaced conspicuously passive television with its seductive illusion of productivity. "
― Lionel Shriver , Big Brother
2 " However gnawing a deficiency, satiety is worse... We are meant to be hungry. "
3 " Whoa, that's the kind of little sister I can dig!" said Edison."Yes, we're all alike," I said. "We cover for you, we lie for you, we take the heat for you. We clean up your messes and mollify our parents for you. We never fail to come across with undying adoration, whether or not you deserve it, and we can't take our lives as seriously as yours. We snuffle up the crumbs from your table on the rare occasions you notice we're alive. "
4 " So when I said I'd miss him, I meant I would miss what we had not experienced, and I don't know what that's called: nostalgia for what didn't happen. "
5 " Maybe the greatest favour a spouse can tender is to overlook what you can't. "
6 " The most sumptuous experience of ingestion is in-between: remembering the last bite and looking forward to the next one. "
7 " But what's so great about being a perfectionist?... You do all this work, and then the stuff you've made just pisses you off. "
8 " Only in retrospect do I appreciate that this “doing your bit” is a deadly misapprehension of the nature of familial ties. Better understanding them now, I find blood relationships rather frightening. What is wonderful about kinship is also what is horrible about it: there is no line in the sand, no natural limit to what these people can reasonably expect of you. "
9 " Got nothing to do with trying. You like someone, or you don't. If you're 'trying', you don't. "
10 " This sounds idiotic, but every time I encounter a picture of myself I am shocked to have been seen. I do not, under ordinary circumstances, feel seen. "
11 " It's as if your money, by conceit inexhaustible, isn't real, so your generosity isn't real, either. "
12 " Now, over the years I've been forced to conclude that most celebrations don't work. The more carefully planned a signal occasion, the more likely it will trickle by on a pale tide of dilute well-meaningness. Christmases, birthdays, award ceremonies, and weddings are swallowed by planning and preparation on the one side and cleaning up on the other, and almost never seem to have actually happened. "
13 " This sounds idiotic, but every time I encounter a picture of myself I am shocked to have been seen. "
14 " The fact that my clothing has been visually available to other people I do not find upsetting. The body is another matter. It is mine; I have found it useful; but it is an avatar. "
15 " Picture how bitterly hordes of the frustrated, disappointed, and dispossessed would greet any complaint about being too satisfied and too wealthy. Be that as it may, it really isn't a very nice sensation not to want anything. Thwarted hopes are no picnic, but desire itself is energizing. "
16 " Just because you learn something in adulthood doesn't mean it's fake. "
17 " Even if he doesn't go to college, he could at least learn to make something. Nobody in this country knows how to sink a nail anymore. They're all dependent on the tradesmen their kids are taught not to become. "
18 " Maybe the greatest favor a spouse can tender is to overlook what you can't. "
19 " Incredibly, the self-starved never appear capable of taking any pleasure in the very vessel for which they've sacrificed. "
20 " It wasn't that eating was so great--it wasn't--but that nothing was great. Eating being merely okay still put it head and shoulders above everything that was decidedly less than okay. "