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9ca06cb
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When I run the world, librarians will be exempt from tragedy. Even their smaller sorrows will last only for as long as you can take out a book.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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2906e64
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Arriving late was a way of saying that your own time was more valuable than the time of the person who waited for you.
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punctuality
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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80ce7ad
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The happening and telling are very different things. This doesn't mean that the story isn't true, only that I honestly don't know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it. Language does this to our memories, simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An off-told story is like a photograph in a family album. Eventually it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.
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truth
storytelling
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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8c39273
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In the phrase ' human being,' the word 'being' is much more important than the word 'human.'
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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5ef0aec
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Language does this to our memories--simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An oft-told story is like a photograph in a family album; eventually, it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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34a7e5b
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The world runs," Lowell said, "on the fuel of this endless, fathomless misery. People know it, but they don't mind what they don't see. Make them look and they mind, but you're the one they hate, because you're the one that made them look."
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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5635556
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In everyone's life there are people who stay and people who go and people who are taken against their will.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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2d93c77
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I once broke up with a boy because he wrote me an awful poem.
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poem
poetry
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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a0745e4
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Lots of people go mad in January. Not as many as in May, of course. Nor June. But January is your third most common month for madness.
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madness
may
june
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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f4ed981
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You learn as much from failure as from success, Dad always says. Though no one admires you for it.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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11f49cb
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I wonder sometimes if I'm the only one spending my life making the same mistake over and over again or if that's simply human. Do we all tend toward a single besetting sin?
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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61e6b5b
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I'm unclear on the definition of person the courts have been using. Something that sieves out dolphins but lets corporations slide on through.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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8cbd5fb
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When there is an invisible elephant in the room, one is from time to time bound to trip over a trunk.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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4976f81
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I thought there were moments to complain about your parents and moments to be grateful, and it was a shame to mix those moments up.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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45e95fa
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Sometimes you best avoid talking by being quiet, but sometimes you best avoid talking by talking.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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3f37925
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The spoken word converts individual knowledge into mutual knowledge, and there is no way back once you've gone over that cliff. Saying nothing was more amendable, and over time I'd come to see that it was usually your best course of action.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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45dd518
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Allegra's Austen wrote about the impact of financial need on the intimate lives of women. If she'd worked in a bookstore, Allegra would have shelved Austen in the horror section.
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humour
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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1d99f7f
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You know how everything seems so normal when you're growing up," she asked plaintively, "and then comes this moment when you realize your whole family is nuts?"
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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2e28ae1
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I didn't want a world in which I had to choose between blind human babies and tortured monkey ones. To be frank, that's the sort of choice I expect science to protect me from, not give me.
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science
experimentation
psychology
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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c81ca8d
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No Utopia is Utopia for everyone
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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3a567ff
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You've done so many things and read so many books. Do you still believe in happy endings?" "Oh my Lord, yes." Bernadette's hands were pressed against each other like a book, like a prayer. "I guess I would. I've had about a hundred of them."
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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dda5331
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I still haven't found the place where I can be my true self. But maybe you never get to be your true self, either.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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63c379b
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But where you succeed will never matter so much as where you fail.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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7a99aa7
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The secret to a good life," he told me once, "is to bring your A game to everything you do. Even if all you're doing is taking out the garbage, you do that with excellence."
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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a2fc575
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The sunset you see is always better than the one you don't. More stars are always better than less.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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ac69306
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Antagonism in my family comes wrapped in layers of code, sideways feints, full deniability. I believe the same can be said of many families.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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954b716
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Language is such an imprecise vehicle I sometimes wonder why we bother with it.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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f716295
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Airports and train stations are where you get to cry
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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8064f47
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Trees are as close to immortality as the rest of us ever come.
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trees
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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ab67a7d
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You can't imagine the white-hot fury someone who can't sleep has toward the beautiful dreamer beside him.
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sleep
fury
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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bdd3215
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It was the marriage that was important; Jane Austen rarely even bothered to write about the wedding.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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20d37b2
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Every mother can easily imagine losing a child. Motherhood is always half loss anyway. The three-year-old is lost at five, the five-year-old at nine. We consort with ghosts, even as we sit and eat with, scold and kiss, their current corporeal forms. We speak to people who have vanished and, when they answer us, they do the same. Naturally, the information in these speeches is garbled in the translation.
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motherhood
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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c5670bf
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But no one is easier to delude than a parent; they see only what they wish to see.
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parenting
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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591c99c
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The value of money is a scam perpetrated by those who have it over those who don't
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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89bf756
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If stupid were fuel, we would never run out.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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d26b0cb
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It seems to me that every time we humans announce that here is the thing that makes us unique--our featherless bipedality, our tool-using, our language--some other species comes along to snatch it away. If modesty were a human trait, we'd have learned to be more cautious over the years.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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d0dd534
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Over the years I've come to feel that the way people respond to us has less to do with what we've done and more to do with who they are.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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62e8342
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He envied the bark, which had been, in the course of one lifetime, both forest and fire. One endured; one destroyed.
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forest
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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406cc3a
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You know, I don't think there's anything truly unforgivable. Not where there's love.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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15f307a
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Owls hoot in B flat, cuckoos in D, but the water ousel sings in the voice of the stream. She builds her nest back of the waterfalls so the water is a lullaby to the little ones. Must be where they learn it.
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music
song
cuckoo
water-ousel
owl
waterfall
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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4ed1416
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What should we read next?" Bernadette asked. "Pride and Prejudice is my favorite. So let's do that," Sylvia said. Are you sure, dear?" Jocelyn asked, I am. It's time. Anyway, Persuasion has the dead mother. I don't want to subject Prudie to that now. The mother in Pride and Prejudice on the other hand..." Don't give anything away," Grigg said. "I haven't read it yet." Grigg had never read Pride and Prejudice. Grigg had never read Pride and ..
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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c276ed5
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I am the daughter of a psychologist. I know that the thing ostensibly being studied is rarely the thing being studied. (We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, p. 99)
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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6dde711
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Marriage seemed like such a small space whenever I was in it. I liked the getting married. Courtship has a plotline. But there's no plot to being married. Just the same things over and over again. Same fights, same friends, same things you do on a Saturday. The repetition would start to get to me.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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f068e12
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Baby, high school's over. High school's never over..
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Karen Joy Fowler |