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"Their reality was far more interesting than any idealized version could possibly be."
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"A goodlookin horse is like a goodlookin woman, he said. They're always more trouble than what they're worth. What a man needs is just one that will get the job done."

"But you don't always get what you want;,you get what you get."

". . . nobody in particular is to blame, that I can see, for the state in which things are . . ."

"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."

"I'm against solutions that are worse than the problem. Like old women who want their hair dyed the color of shoe polish to hide the gray."

"Expectations are at war, if good feeling and discomfort clash. When we are expecting zest and joy, our good karma may be ousted by distress and frustration, if negative downbeat waves are emitted. Just with a feel of realism, without prejudice, should we step into the future. What will be, will be. Only the fortune of war will tell, since life may be war or peace. ['Fish for silence.']"

"These mods made significant improvements to the cars " enough so that I changed my mind (another procedure altogether) every time I thought of selling the damn thing and buying a Toyota. I hope you benefit from this and preserve your ailing finances!Good luck!"

"Sometimes it is not right to wait for the right train. Take any train instead of rotting at the station! In other words, be realistic!"
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"Is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name?"


"It's so heartbreaking and unnecessary how we lose things. From pure carelessness. Fires, wars. The Parthenon, used as a munitions storehouse. I guess that anything we manage to save from history is a miracle."


"I think politics is deadly to write about, frankly. If you have a political agenda and you set out to write a novel to prove that, say, capitalism should crumble, then it's going to be a really bad novel. Very few people have been able to deal with political fiction - Dickens, Dostoyevsky. But even Tolstoy got really tiresome when he was talking about the serfs. You have to let characters be characters, not [gruff voice] Mr Capitalism or [girlie voice] Miss Anti-Fur."


"Fate is cruel but maybe not random. Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn't mean we have to bow and gravel to it."


"And beauty is terror,' said Julian, 'then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?''To live,' said Camilla.'To live forever,' said Bunny, chin cupped in palm."


"This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all humanity and human endeavor from the dawn of time. The writhing loathsomeness of the biological order. Old age, sickness, death. No escape for anyone. Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil. And yet somehow people still kept fucking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the grave, producing more and more new beings to suffer like this was some kind of redemptive, or good, or even somehow morally admirable thing: dragging more innocent creatures into the lose-lose game."


"It was a myth you couldn't function on opiates: shooting up was one thing but for someone like me-jumping at pigeons beating from the sidewalk, afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder practically to the point of spasticity and cerebral palsy-pills were the key to being not only competent, but high-functioning."


"What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can't get there any other way?"
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