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e869872
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I'm not sure I know what 'simple-hearted' means," I said haughtily. "When there's no deceit or malice in your heart. Most of us have some; it protects us. People without it are rare."
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Gail Godwin |
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2cc9ebd
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because you're a child and you have no way to compare your life to other people's lives. Your foremost need is to stay safe within the only life you know.
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Gail Godwin |
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eef8059
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There are things we can't undo, but perhaps there is a kind of constructive remorse that could transform regrettable acts into something of service to life.
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Gail Godwin |
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f2d72fc
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I contemplated how I was going to get through the rest of the day and felt the onset of a terror I thought I had outgrown. I hated it when these started to form. One unwelcome subject sought out its counterparts--farewells, people leaving and never coming back, ambulances.... And then counterparts attracted similar old hurts and horrors until you were trapped in the nucleus of the cluster. This cluster, I knew, was labeled LOSS in big b..
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Gail Godwin |
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34c57f3
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The person in the song is really addressing a powerful and constant state of yearning more than he is any real lover. It's the state of this yearning that torments him, yet he also loves his torment. He needs it. Because he understands that being able to feel this yearning so exquisitely is his secret strength.
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Gail Godwin |
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4750e66
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But the son whips out a Bayer aspirin, the father rises to his feet, embraces the son, and Technicolor is restored to their lives.
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Gail Godwin |
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f061c43
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When I was in seminary," Father Edward had told other guests around the table when he was purchasing his books, "my spiritual director told me not to read theology. 'Read novels,' he said, and I have."
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Gail Godwin |
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994bbd7
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Yes, if you believed in words, if you lived by words,
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Gail Godwin |
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4153989
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Nonie often remarked that every one of us needed to get away from other people and replenish our personal reserves.
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Gail Godwin |
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d65db57
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Not everybody gets to grow up. First you have to survive your childhood, and then begins the hard work of growing into it.
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growing-up
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Gail Godwin |
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b45751a
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Remorse went out of fashion around the same time that "Stop feeling guilty," and "You're too hard on yourself," and "You need to love yourself more" came into fashion."
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Gail Godwin |
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3c79396
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A person always has control over how she meets her adversities, and the good news is that the facing of them, one after another, year after year, builds an inner strength that nobody can take away from you.
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Gail Godwin |
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1ee8577
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In friendships . . . the requisits are always the same. Each provides the other with a refuge in time of trouble, with a continuum to fall back on in time of self-doubt, with an underpinning of earned trust upon which it is possible to build new achievements.
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Gail Godwin |
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9f803eb
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That's why I envy Justin here in no small way. Despite her unfortunate room, and all those milkmaids threatening to swallow her with their smiles ... she can start her life over and be anything she chooses to be. Nobody knows what she was like back in Fredericksburg. She has lost all the props that defined her. Nobody knows all the peculiarities and character traits of her forebears so they can pretend to recognize those traits in her. She'..
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Gail Godwin |
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a92de53
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the remembrance of them is grievous unto us; the burden of them is intolerable.
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Gail Godwin |
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3436338
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General Confession it had been watered down to we are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
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Gail Godwin |
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7c27090
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She was her steady self again, the one about whom Nonie had said, "I admire that woman. Despite all her adversities, Beryl Jones manages to stay in control her days."
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Gail Godwin |
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be4df5b
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If someone had really done you an ill turn and later came to you and said, "I am truly sorry," would that mean as much to you as "the burden of it has been intolerable to me"? Remorse"
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Gail Godwin |
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3b59831
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After all the human noise and conflicts have stopped, the absent person has more room in your heart to spread out and be herself. My mother's been gone ten years and I know her much better now than when we saw each other every day.
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Gail Godwin |
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418b440
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But what we ought to fear is the kind of death that happens in life. It can happen at any time. You're going along, and then, at some point, you congeal. You know, like jelly. You're not fluid anymore. You solidify at a certain point and from then on your life is doomed to be a repetition of what you have done before.
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Gail Godwin |
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a9140f0
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All beautiful, dangerous idols fall, I thought, if you keep your eye on them long enough.
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Gail Godwin |
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b4452a4
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Maybe it's because I'm more confident of my own powers now, not so afraid of losing myself, of being molded by other people's needs of me, of being overwhelmed by them, that I can live in those strange, green days again and willingly be that girl.
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Gail Godwin |
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511a557
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As long as you can go on creating new roles for yourself, you are not vanquished.
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Gail Godwin |
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d03ee3c
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Other people don't exist when you're not with them.
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Gail Godwin |
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8e1a265
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As a teacher, Kurt Vonnegut was easy, magnanimous. He didn't try to make his students into little Kurt Vonneguts. He respected material unlike his own and was startlingly humble about what he did. ("I write with a big black crayon," he would write to me later, "while you're more of an impressionist. I don't think you have it in you to be crude.") In his workshop sessions, things always seemed a little looser, a little kinder, a little funni..
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Gail Godwin |
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64ab1ec
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Squashed behind The Cloud of Unknowing we discovered a pocket-size spiral notebook with a day-by-day account of the time Justin had stayed with her and her husband after Tommy's death. The writing was legible though it required effort (this was before she took her calligraphy course), but Justin was ecstatic and asked if he could have the little notebook. "This is my history," he said. Later, after he had deciphered every last word: "Boy, w..
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writing
personal
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Gail Godwin |
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c150941
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One of the notebooks was for musings and pep talks. ... The other notebooks were for writing out the novel the way authors had done for centuries.
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Gail Godwin |
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cd3939c
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Discontent," Father Maturin said, enunciating the word with a strange vigor and looking straight at Elizabeth, "may be God's catapult, His way of saying: 'Go and try yourself now."
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Gail Godwin |
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7366756
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People commit thousands of small suicides every day that go unnoticed
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Gail Godwin |
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b56f00a
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What is memory but another narrative form?
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Gail Godwin |
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70d25e2
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May their having each other make more of them both.
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partnerships
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Gail Godwin |
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63bbb6c
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The human mind, as we know from personal experience, is a chronic time traveler, but we are repeatedly amazed by its ability to hitch up the body, the body that resides the only place it can-- in present time-- and pull it along like a wagon, with its entire load of sensory equipment, backward or forward into other time zones.
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Gail Godwin |
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391611d
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During all my worrying about how and when and whether we'd ever get together again, I had neglected to imagine we might slip back together as naturally as a dislocated joint slipping back into place, followed by an ardor more straightforward than either of us had been capable of before.
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Gail Godwin |
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1fcbfdc
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When someone has enough money, logistics can be worked out in no time.
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wealth
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Gail Godwin |
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c10169d
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How glibly and thoughtlessly that phrase 'make us grow' slides off our tongues. As if growth were always a happy, shapely matter: leaves unfurling, blossoms opening, hearts and minds joyously stretching toward more light. Whereas the fact of the matter was, when we asked for growth, we were asking for a mess. Exploding tempers, privately nursed little petri dishes of resentments, insecure stumblings into dangerous new places.
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Gail Godwin |
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bb6df27
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It was more like I saw him coming and knew he was the one. I went out of myself to meet him and then couldn't get back inside without bringing him with me.
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Gail Godwin |