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"Most of us don't notice how great we look until years, even decades later. Not long ago, I was looking at photos of myself at various ages and weights-way before the neckular deterioration began, way before the fanny pack of menopause-and I could see how gorgeous I must have looked to everyone else."
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"Huge biceps are an unattractive-uneducated-underpaid man's last attempt to be seen as worthy of dating, or, sleeping with."
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Personal Development
"The little man gave the big one a look. One of his eyes was green, one was black, and both were cool."
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Personal Development
"Her face is silting up, like a pond; layers are accumulating. Every once in a while, when she can afford the time, she spends a few days at a spa north of the city, drinking vegetable juice and having ultrasound treatments, in search of her original face, the one she knows is under there somewhere; she comes back feeling toned up and virtuous, and hungry."
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Personal Development
"A beautiful lady with an evil heart is like a hundred dollar note cut in two with one piece missing."
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Personal Development
"An important part of dressing for success is not only wearing something well but making sure it is appropriate for the occasion or the environment."
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Personal Development
"There was a photograph of Trout. He was an old man with a full black beard. He looked like a frightened, aging Jesus, whose sentence to crucifixion had been commuted to imprisonment for life."
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Personal Development
"Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating."
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Personal Development
"What lies behind appearance is usually another appearance."
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Personal Development
"Intelligence, goodness, humanity, excitement, serenity. Over time, these are the things that change the musculature of your face, as do laughter, and animation, and especially whatever peace you can broker with the person inside.It's furrow, pinch, and judgement that make us look older - our mothers were right. They said that if you made certain faces, they would stick, and they do. But our mothers forgot that faces of kindness and integrity stick as well."
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Personal Development
"Though Queen Victoria in England had suggested that makeup was impolite, even vanity, Gideon saw it as yet another weapon. It was not so different from magic."
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Personal Development
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"Our shadow is on the outside. And we can see in the dark: we can see you, we see you turn away, but one day we finally understand that you turn away not from our faces but from your own fears. From those things inside you that you think mark you as someone unlovable to your family, and society, and even to God."
Fear
"The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it...I would discover that it hadn't washed me away."
Emotion
"Now she and I sit together in her room and eat chocolate, and I tell her that in a very long time when we both to go heaven, we should try to get chairs next to each other, close to the dessert table."
Friendship
"Grace means suddenly you're in a different universe from the one where you were stuck, and there was absolutely no way for you to get there on your own."
Grace
"Everyone is flailing through this life without an owner's manual, with whatever modicum of grace and good humor we can manage."
Life
"Holiness has most often been revealed to me in the exquisite pun of the first syllable, in holes- in not enough help, in brokenness, mess. High holy places, with ethereal sounds and stained glass, can massage my illusion of holiness, but in holes and lostness I can pick up the light of small ordinary progress, newly made moments flecked like pepper into the slog and the disruptions."
Spiritual
"You want to avoid at all costs drawing your characters on those that already exist in other works of fiction. You must learn about people from people, not from what you read. Your reading should confirm what you've observed in the world."
Writing
"My theory is that, as with our children, as with every surface of that geodesic dome inside the 8-Ball, every age we've ever been is who we are."
Identity
"In biblical times, they used to stone a few thirteen-year-olds with some regularity, which helped keep the others quiet and at home. The mothers were usually in the first row of stone throwers, and had to be restrained."
History
"Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them."
Writing
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