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df78557
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Any person who wants to govern the world is by definition the wrong person to do it.
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Greg Iles |
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39838f5
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I will do those things which make me happy today and which I can also live with ten years from now.
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Greg Iles |
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dbb75a4
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Einstein said the arrow of time flies in only one direction. Faulkner, being from Mississippi, understood the matter differently. He said the past is never dead; it's not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose provenance dates to the dim drama..
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Greg Iles |
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cd60717
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The temptation to second-guess is strong. But I must remember one thing. Life is simple.
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Greg Iles |
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ddfd085
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When everything is at risk, good judgment, not haste, makes the difference between life and death. Panic is the enemy.
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Greg Iles |
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cc13729
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He always reminded us that every atom in our bodies was once part of a distant star that had exploded. He talked about how evolution moves from simplicity toward complexity, and how human intelligence is the highest known expression of evolution. I remember him telling me that a frog's brain is much more complex than a star. He saw human consciousness as the first neuron of the universe coming to life and awareness. A spark in the darkness,..
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Greg Iles |
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97e2075
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Man plans, God laughs,
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Greg Iles |
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445a3c3
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Her touch was as knowing and confident as her eyes, and as she focused all her attention upon me, I remembered that there is nothing so thrilling as a woman of words when she decides that the time for words is past.
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Greg Iles |
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9759341
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When a parent dies, your center of gravity is altered. Even if you lived apart from them--even if you walled yourself off from all contact--you are irrevocably lessened by their passing. Death, like gravity, respects no barriers.
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Greg Iles |
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8ddbbb3
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My favorite book is The Mysterious Island. I order my books from a flimsy catalog the teacher hands out to every student in the class. Emil and the Detectives. White Fang. Like that. Money is tight for us, but when it comes to books my mother is a spendthrift; I can order as many as I like. I sit here day after day, waiting for my books to arrive. My books. It takes a month or more, but when they finally do, when the teacher opens the big b..
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Greg Iles |
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c50e984
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Man is the universe becoming conscious of itself.
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universe
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Greg Iles |
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42b5fe7
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You know, the truth isn't hard to find, if you're willing to get your hands dirty. Truth waits just under the surface for any man brave enough to scrape a little dirt away. But most people are too afraid or too lazy to get dirty. They're afraid to ask the right questions. The hard questions.
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Greg Iles |
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78943f7
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I don't really understand the world anymore. But maybe there's some faint hope that the good people on both sides can come together.
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world-peace
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Greg Iles |
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6a0a7c6
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I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve. --Jane Austen, Persuasion, paraphr.
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Greg Iles |
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90c9544
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People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.
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Greg Iles |
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8979c77
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Don't keep a girl guessing too long, or she'll find the answer somewhere else.
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Greg Iles |
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4abfd97
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The evil prosper, and the innocent pay the bills for them.
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Greg Iles |
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0e9c707
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Just because you will not see the work completed does not mean you are free not to take it up.
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Greg Iles |
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6f1d22d
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At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. --Aristotle
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Greg Iles |
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cd44ade
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Whenever life gets too good, whenever fate hands you something wonderful, something else gets taken away.
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Greg Iles |
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3d41af0
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We do not just belong to this universe, we are it.
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universe
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Greg Iles |
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6323501
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that right meant more than might; that being faithful and good meant more than being rich; that honor superseded all.
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Greg Iles |
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5357b7a
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You can't build happiness on someone else's pain.
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happiness
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Greg Iles |
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be4b3f6
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I listened in amazement. You saw a face on an American street, or in an office, and you had no idea that a tragic epic lay behind it.
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Greg Iles |
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20abd34
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When you drive down Cemetery Road, the angel appears to be looking directly at you. Yet once you pass the monument and look back over your shoulder, the angel is still looking at you. Thus the appellation: the Turning Angel.
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Greg Iles |
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8850b35
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The Terrible Truth is that brutality is part of human nature, and all the laws in the world can't neuter it.
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Greg Iles |
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128b73d
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God is all powerful. God is good. Evil exists. You can reconcile any two of those statements, but not all three.
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Greg Iles |
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df2cc2a
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Let me tell you a secret, Caitlin. We're still in the cave. It's just bigger, and we wear nicer clothes. We make alliances and try to be civil, we save the weak instead of leaving them out in the cold to die. . .
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Greg Iles |
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e46f306
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We judge and punish based on facts, but facts are not truth. Facts are like a buried skeleton uncovered long after death. Truth is fluid. Truth is alive. To know the truth requires understanding, the most difficult human art. It requires seeing all things at once, forward and backward, the way God sees.
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Greg Iles |
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22513f4
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yet he [Levon] somehow sings with the wounded humanity of a man without a tribe, a man who has known both love and grief and understands that one is the price of the other.
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Greg Iles |
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e6e8bc1
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If a man lived long enough, his past would always overtake him, no matter how fast he ran or how morally he tried to live subsequently. And how men dealt with that law ultimately revealed their true natures.
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Greg Iles |
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73f0982
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For once the stone hits the surface of the pond, the ripples never really stop.
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Greg Iles |
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c9faf5d
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Emotions are by nature amorphous. When confined to words, our longings and passions, our rebellions and humiliations often seem melodramatic, trivial, or even pathetic.
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Greg Iles |
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2538bd4
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Mississippi blood is different. It's got some river in it. Delta soil, turpentine, asbestos, cotton poison. But there's strength in it, too. Strength that's been beat but not broke.
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Greg Iles |
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22ccdfb
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Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children, because they're more certain they are their own.
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Greg Iles |
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895f790
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Greed, apathy, hubris--even loyalty--all demand payment in the end. Storms will always come, and men will always do evil in the shadow of some other word.
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Greg Iles |
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68043ca
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But as my mother always said: You never know what's cooking in someone else's pot.
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Greg Iles |
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dc94991
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Did the fact that Martin Luther King diddled all those women change what he did for his people? Or Franklin Roosevelt? General Eisenhower? Not one whit. Men are men, and gods are for storybooks. And if you've read your Edith Hamilton or Jane Harrison--or the Old Testament, for that matter--you'll know that gods acted like men most of the time, or worse.
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Greg Iles |
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49800db
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All partnerships fail in the end, just like marriages. The only life after death any human being will ever know is staying in a marriage or a partnership after it's over. And that's not life--it's living death.
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Greg Iles |
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672eb35
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Einstein said the arrow of time flies in only one direction. Faulkner, being from Mississippi, understood the matter differently. He said the past is never dead; it's not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.
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Greg Iles |
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3550cd9
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I educated myself, discovered my gift for language, learned that the larger world lay not across oceans but within the human mind and heart.
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Greg Iles |
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79e3c4c
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There's no meaning to be found in tragedy. Only in our response to it.
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Greg Iles |
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d7d748b
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If I cannot change what I had for lunch yesterday, I certainly cannot unmake a marriage, erase the betrayal of a friend, or board a ship that left port twenty years ago.
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Greg Iles |
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6348b84
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Our actions have consequences that last long after us, entwining the present with the future in ways we cannot begin to understand. I have resolved a simple thing: I will do those things which make me happy today, and which I can also live with ten years from now.
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Greg Iles |