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9f05cb0
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The music in his laughter had a way of rounding off the missing notes in her soul.
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Gloria Naylor |
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373946c
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She could walk through a lightning storm without being touched; grab a bolt of lightning in the palm of her hand; use the heat of lightning to start the kindling going under her medicine pot. She turned the moon into salve, the stars into swaddling cloth, and healed the wounds of every creature walking up on two or down on four.
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women
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Gloria Naylor |
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09d586c
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Time's passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystalize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days. It is silent and elusive, refusing to be damned and dripped out day by day; it swirls through the mind while an entire lifetime can ride like foam on the deceptive, transparent waves and ge..
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Gloria Naylor |
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7d81f2e
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They all trying to say something with music that you can't say with plain talk. There ain't really no words for love or pain. And the way I see it, only fools go around trying to talk their love or talk their pain. So the smart people make music and you can kinda hear about it without them saying anything.
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Gloria Naylor |
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416da10
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Time is a funny thing. I was always puzzled with the way a single day could stretch itself out to the point of eternity in your mind, all while years melted down into the fraction of a second.
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Gloria Naylor |
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f3bbf83
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The right woman is the one you can live with, not the one in your head.
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Gloria Naylor |
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0246e23
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Life's too short to spend time trying to explain the obvious to an idiot.
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Gloria Naylor |
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c05c85b
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Home. It's being new and old all rolled into one. Measuring your new against old friends, old ways, old places, Knowing that as long as the old survives, you can keep changing as much as you want without the nightmare of waking up to a total stranger.
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Gloria Naylor |
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aa6a943
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I was so busy enjoying the change in you, I didn't notice it in myself.
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Gloria Naylor |
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0790696
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Brewster Place became especially fond of its colored daughters as they milled like determined spirits among its decay, trying to make it home. Nutmeg arms leaned over windowsills, gnarled ebony legs carried groceries up double flights of steps, and saffron hands strung out wet laundry on backyard lines. Their perspiration mingled with the steam from boiling pots of smoked pork greens, and it curled on the edges of the aroma of vinegar douch..
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Gloria Naylor |
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309861f
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Time's passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystallize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days.
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time
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Gloria Naylor |
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40f0b57
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3)"One man's weed is another man's flower." (115)."
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Gloria Naylor |
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13e800e
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2)"Even though this planet is round, there are just too many spots where you can find yourself hanging on to the edge just like I was; and unless there's some space, some place, to take a breather for awhile, the edge of the world- frightening as it is- could be the end of the world, which would be quite a pity." (28)."
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Gloria Naylor |
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3e746e9
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You can lose a lot when you travel too much.
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Gloria Naylor |
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967fdb0
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I never dreamed that she meant lights. Sparkling. Shimmering. Waves of light. We could see them from the front of the cafe. Besides the few customers, everyone who lived on the street was gathered inside. And I mean everyone, even strange little Esther. She'd squeezed herself into the darkest corner of the room, sitting on the floor with her arms wrapped around her bent knees. But even her face was in awe. Silvers. Pearls. Iridescent pinks...
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Gloria Naylor |
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4c91c7b
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We all don't have to see eye to eye in order to see our way to the Kingdom. It's the heart condition of each man that the Lord will judge.
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Gloria Naylor |
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a00eba4
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Like they say, it takes all types to make the world. But sometimes you wish it didn't.
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Gloria Naylor |
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50649d6
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When you raise a god instead of a child, you're bound to be serving him for the rest of your days. Same thing holds when you marry a god.
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Gloria Naylor |
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ad3af38
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She done mellowed plenty since this marriage. Soft around the edges without getting too soft at the center. You fear that sometimes for women, that they would just fold up and melt away. She'd seen it happen so much in her time, too much for her to head on into it without thinking. Yes, that one time when she was way, way young. But after that, looking at all the beating, the badgering, the shriveling away from a lack of true touching was e..
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Gloria Naylor |
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e7e04e9
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He holds his glass up and turns to me as a single flake catches on the rim before melting down the one side into an amber world where bubbles burst and are born, burst and are born.
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Gloria Naylor |
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dd01ecc
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There is nothing in back of this cafe. Since the place sits right on the margin between the edge of the world and infinite possibility, he back door opens out to a void. It takes courage to turn the knob and heart to leave the steps.
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Gloria Naylor |
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ef68701
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Curl moaned. Mattie rocked. Propelled by the sound, Mattie rocked her out of that bed, out of that room, into a blue vastness just underneath the sun and above time. She rocked her over Aegean seas so clean they shine like crystal, so clear the fresh blood of sacrificed babies torn from their mothers arms and given to Neptune could be seen like pink froth on the water. She rocked her on and on, past Dachau, where soul-gutted Jewish mothers ..
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Gloria Naylor |
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5018348
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True insanity, as frightening as it might be, gives a sort of obliviousness to the chaos in a life. People who commit suicide are struggling to order their existence, and when they see it's a losing battle, they will finalize it rather than have it wrenched from them. Insanity wouldn't permit that type of clarity.
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Gloria Naylor |
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64ac6eb
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She had stepped into the thin strip of earth that they claimed as their own. Bound by the last building on Brewster and a brick wall, they reigned in that unlit alley like dwarfed warrior kings. Born with the appendages of power, circumcised by the guillotine, and baptized with the steam from a million non reflective mirrors, these young men wouldn't be called upon to thrust a bayonet into an Asian farmer, target a torpedo, scatter their ir..
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Gloria Naylor |
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f6eb9a3
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You don't repay kindness with needless cruelty.
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Gloria Naylor |
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c0cab7c
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There's something hypocritical about a city that keeps half of its population underground half of the time; you can start believing that there's much more space than there really is -- to live, to work.
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Gloria Naylor |
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cd1c32c
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Contempt mates well with pity.
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Gloria Naylor |
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6cf80a3
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Power knows power.
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Gloria Naylor |
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3077675
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but it's one of the reflections of our times. Young minds today are dulled by television and other visual sensations. When reading was one of the few pleasures available, we could recite whole passages to eachother.
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Gloria Naylor |
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576f058
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Bloody noses had made them friends, but giving sound to the bruised places in their hearts made them brothers.
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Gloria Naylor |
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d5c94ac
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The unpainted walls of the long rectangular room were soaked with the smell of greasy chicken and warm, headless beer. The brown and pink faces floated above the trails of used cigarette smoke like bodiless carnival balloons.
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Gloria Naylor |
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b712a49
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She sincerely liked Mattie because unlike the others, Mattie never found the time to do jury duty on other people's lives.
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Gloria Naylor |
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535522b
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A rumor needs no true parent. It only needs a willing carrier,
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Gloria Naylor |
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71b6e53
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Ceil moaned. Mattie rocked. Propelled by the sound, Mattie rocked her out of that bed, out of that room, into a blue vastness just underneath the sun and above time. She rocked her over Aegean seas so clean they shine like crystal, so clear the fresh blood of sacrificed babies torn from their mothers arms and given to Neptune could be seen like pink froth on the water. She rocked her on and on, past Dachau, where soul-gutted Jewish mothers ..
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Gloria Naylor |
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c35edab
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God had given her what she prayed for--a little boy who would always need her.
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Gloria Naylor |
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aa10dd1
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Etta and Mattie went way back, a singular term that claimed co-knowledge of all the important events in their lives and almost all of the unimportant ones.
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Gloria Naylor |
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335c37c
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But she noticed that some of the people who had spoken to her before made a point of having something else to do with their eyes when she passed, although she could almost feel them staring at her back as she moved on.
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Gloria Naylor |
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89b03b0
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They were hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleased, these women of Brewster Place.
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Gloria Naylor |
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8aa75b6
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All the beautiful plants that once had an entire sun porch for themselves in the home she had exchanged thirty years of her life to pay for would now have to fight for light on a crowded windowsill.
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Gloria Naylor |
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b9fcd78
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That Butch Fuller is a no-'count ditch hound, and no decent woman would be seen talkin' to him. But Butch had a laugh like the edges of an April sunset--translucent and mystifying. You knew it couldn't last forever, but you'd stand for hours, hoping for the chance to experience just a glimmer of it once again.
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Gloria Naylor |
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276291f
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Everything about Butch was like puffed air and cotton candy, but it thrilled her anyway whenever he straightened up to call to her through the tall grass.
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Gloria Naylor |
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0102b61
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If she had seen Ben, nothing would have made her believe that practically every apartment contained a family, a Bible, and a dream that one day enough could be scraped from those meager Friday night paychecks to make Brewster Place a distant memory.
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Gloria Naylor |
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a4a60a9
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Basil stopped crying instantly in order to enjoy Ciel's punishment.
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Gloria Naylor |
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69b33c5
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You're a crafty old woman. You always try to win an argument by talkin' about some funeral. You're too ornery to die, and you know it.
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Gloria Naylor |