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Quotes by Writer
"Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what's wrong, because they'll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony's gone from liberating to enslaving. ... The postmodern founders' patricidal work was great, but patricide produces orphans, and no amount of revelry can make up for the fact that writers my age have been literary orphans throughout our formative years."
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"It's not my fate to give up--I know it can't be."
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"An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup."
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"There is grand romance in The Lord of the Rings. It's an important part of epic literature."
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"The premise is: everybody's like me and we all think alike.The corollary is: people who don't think like me don't matter."
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"Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity."
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"My total year's income from working as hard as I possibly could from writing went from like $30 one year to about $70 the next year. And it made me realize that maybe you couldn't really pay the rent that way."
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"What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly."
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"The universe is an amazingly fickle and eventful place, and our existence within is a wonder."
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"If you want change you must take full responsibility for yourself. No one else defines how you live. You are the only one with the power for your self-change."
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"When a solipsist dies ... everything goes with him."
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"We focus upon pairs of words very often which are the same in some areas and different in other areas."
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"We may seem fine, even when the pain remains right there beneath our surface."
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"Sometimes life begins when the marriage ends."
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"When I look back now, I realize what a trial I must have been to my friends and relatives. It was one frenzy after one elation after one enthusiasm after one hysteria after another. I was always yelling and running somewhere, because I was afraid life was going to be over that very afternoon."
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"Moderation is the feebleness and sloth of the soul, whereas ambition is the warmth and activity of it."
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"I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens."
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"He was looking for immensity. His life was hopelessly small, everything surrounding him was nondescript and gray. And death is absolute; it is indivisible and indissoluble. The presence of the girl was pathetic (a few caresses and a lot of meaningless words), but her absolute absence was infinitely grand; when he imagined a girl buried in a field, he suddenly discovered the nobility of pain and the grandeur of love. But it was not only the absolute but also bliss he was looking for in his dreams of death."
51
"Going back to something is harder than you think."
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"Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself."
Mind,
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"Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy."
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"Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad netstowards your oceanic eyes.There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames,its arms turning like a drowning man's.I send out red signals across your absent eyesthat smell like the sea or the beach by a lighthouse.You keep only darkness, my distant female,from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad netsto that sea that is thrashed by your oceanic eyes.The birds of night peck at the first starsthat flash like my soul when I love you.The night gallops on its shadowy mareshedding blue tassels over the land."
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"Majority rule gives the ruthless strong man plenty of elbow room to oppress his fellows."
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"Now this was one of the things I had been brought up to eschew like disgrace; it being held by my father neither the part of a Christian nor yet of a gentleman to set his own livelihood and fish for that of others, on the cast of painted pasteboard."
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"Admittedly great though these reasons be, they are not the principal grounds, that is, those which may rightfully claim for themselves the privilege of the highest admiration."
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"Self-conciousness is the enemy of all creativity."
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"Every day you grow stronger and the challenges become easier. Keep going."
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"What if he could see this, his own skull, yellow and eroded? Two centuries old. Would he still speak? Would he speak, if he could see it, the grinning, aged skull? What would there be for him to say, to tell the people? What message could he bring?What action would not be futile, when a man could look upon his own aged, yellowed skull?"
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"Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are."
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"Be sure to bend but never break."
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"I like a lot of Margaret Atwood, I like much of Alice Munro. Again, if you were to ask me about male writers, there's often a novel I admire, but not all of their works."
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"Bliss-a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious-lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you've never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it's like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom."
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