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"Their reality was far more interesting than any idealized version could possibly be."
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"Real problems can't be fixed with a motivational poster, a cute quote or a pat on the back."

"A realist is a slave to reality."

"Never go for someone that represents something that is more of a fantasy than reality in this crazy world of lonely people, unless it is for the shortest time possible, and unless you have clearly figured out an exit strategy."

"Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine, without batting an eyelash, and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least. Women are wonderful realists."

"The 'practical' man, as this word is often used, is one who recognizes only the material needs, who realizes that men must have food for the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of providing food for the mind."
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"Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent."


"But when she was annoyed with me, she had a cold way of saying "Apparently in answer to almost anything I said, making me feel stupid. "Um, I can't find the can opener. "Apparently. "There's going to be a lunar eclipse tonight. "Apparently. "Look, sparks are coming out of the wall socket. "Apparently."


"To really be centered and to really work well and to think about the kinds of things that I need to think about, I need to spend large amounts of time alone."


"Richard Papen: As it happened, I knew Gartrell. He was a bad painter and a vicious gossip, with a vocabulary composed almost entirely of obscenities, gutteral verbs, and the world "postmodernist."


"I'm not sure whay I've been drawn to this subject, except that murder is a subject that has always drawn people for as long as people have been telling stories."


"It's hard for me to show work while I'm writing, because other people's comments will influence what happens."


"The shame that tormented me was all the more corrosive for having no very clear origin: I didn't know why I felt so tainted, and worthless, and wrong-only that I did, and whenever I looked up from my books I was swamped by slimy waters rushing in from all sides."


"Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life-a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple-the painter is giving you a secret message. He's telling you that living things don't last-it's all temporary. Death in life. That's why they're called natures mortes. Maybe you don't see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer-there it is."


"The storytelling gift is innate: one has it or one doesn't. But style is at least partly a learned thing: one refines it by looking and listening and reading and practice - by work."
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