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256ba07
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Fuck you! I hope you die!" "Everybody Dies," I said. "So fuck you."
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truth
pessimism
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Lawrence Block |
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3ad3ca2
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If you want to write fiction, the best thing you can do is take two aspirins, lie down in a dark room, and wait for the feeling to pass.
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Lawrence Block |
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d7fa272
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I wanted a drink. There were a hundred reasons why a man will want a drink, but I wanted one now for the most elementary reason of all. I didn't want to feel what I was feeling, and a voice within was telling me that I needed a drink, that I couldn't bear it without it. But that voice is a liar. You can always bear the pain. It'll hurt, it'll burn like acid in an open wound, but you can stand it. And, as long as you can make yourself go on ..
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pain
sobriety
alchoholism
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Lawrence Block |
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c22beb9
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She knew how much I needed her. And now she was teasing, playing games. I looked at her and watched her turn into a sex symbol in front of my eyes. She did not look sweet and virginal and lovely anymore. I looked at the very simple summer dress and saw breasts and belly and hips. I looked at her eyes and saw lust as naked as my own.
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hard-boiled
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Lawrence Block |
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d4d3717
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Something I learned long ago. It is not necessary to know what a person is afraid of. It is enough to know the person is afraid.
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Lawrence Block |
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9564fef
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I haven't got anything against cats. I haven't got anything against elk either, but that doesn't mean I'm going to keep one in the store so I'll have a place to hang my hat.
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Lawrence Block |
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b5bba18
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People don't get to change things. Things change people once in a while, but people don't change things.
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Lawrence Block |
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b733b31
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Dangerous thing, giving humanity the knowledge of good and evil. And the capacity to make the wrong choice more often than not.
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Lawrence Block |
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edca4aa
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We turned out to be good for each other. For a stitch of time all the hard questions went away and hid in dark places.
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Lawrence Block |
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2dc3afc
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You show up at these meetings to stay sober and you walk out with a fucking education.
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Lawrence Block |
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98cf4ed
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It's enough of a strain killing people. I've no time for deer. --Mick Ballou
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Lawrence Block |
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fab06cb
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Everybody's weird, fundamentally everybody is a snap. Sometimes it's a sexual thing and sometimes it's a different kind of weirdness, but one way or another everybody's nuts.
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weird
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Lawrence Block |
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706e67c
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Everybody has mean little places inside himself.
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Lawrence Block |
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3a93c32
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Everybody tells me what a timesaver the Internet is, and how they can't believe they ever got along without it. And I know what they mean, but every time I use it I wind up wondering what people did with their spare time before computers came along to suck it all up.
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Lawrence Block |
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a331d73
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I thought I'd go home and reread Sue Grafton. It's been a while since I last read the one about the topless dancer who gets poison injected into one of her implants." "'D' Is For Cup." "Right. Bern, you know what I wish? I wish she didn't have to stop at twenty-six. When the alphabet's used up, what happens to Kinsey?" "Are you kidding? She goes straight into double letters. 'AA' Is For drunks, 'BB' Is For Gun, 'CC' Is For Rider. There was ..
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Lawrence Block |
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f546165
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I thought, My name is Matt and I'm an alcoholic. A woman I know got killed last night. She hired me to keep her from getting killed and I wound up assuring her that she was safe and she believed me. And her killer conned me and I believed him, and she's dead now, and there's nothing I can do about it. And it eats at me and I don't know what to do about that, and there's a bar on every corner and a liquor store on every block, and drinking w..
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death
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Lawrence Block |
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5027092
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You know, it was a revelation to me to learn that I don't have to be comfortable. Nowhere is it written that I must be comfortable. I always thought if I felt nervous or anxious or unhappy I had to do something about it. But I learned that's not true. Bad feelings won't kill me. Alcohol will kill me, but my feelings won't.
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Lawrence Block |
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20b3f17
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I dialed it now, and the machine picked up. I listened to a dead man's voice. I hung up, wondering how long it would be before someone unplugged the machine, how long before the telephone company cut off the phone service. You don't die all at once. Not anymore. These days you die a little at a time.
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Lawrence Block |
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b26fc34
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As a friend of mine, herself a writer, says, "People who spend the most meaningful hours of their lives in the exclusive company of imaginary people are apt to be a little strange."
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Lawrence Block |
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1191871
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She made love with the freshness of an impatient virgin and the ingenuity of a sex-scarred whore.
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Lawrence Block |
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a7f8ad2
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I wouldn't presume to define noir - if we could define it, we wouldn't need to use a French word for it - but it seems to me it's more a way of looking at the world than what one sees.
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Lawrence Block |
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e90779b
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Is that what I am? I don't know what the hell I am anymore." "Oh, bullshit. You're a guy, a human being. Just another poor son of a bitch who doesn't want to be alone when the sacred ginmill closes."
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Lawrence Block |
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a1993d8
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The novel, I submit, is not merely the ultimate goal. It is also the place to start.
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Lawrence Block |
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e304089
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Fiction writing starts off by requiring the towering arrogance that enables one to sit down at the typewriter in the belief that someone somewhere will actually be eager to read the productions of our own private imaginations. But that arrogance must be buffered by the humility that leads us to learn our craft and strive to make our work comprehensible and inviting and accessible to the reader.
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Lawrence Block |
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a5decd6
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Novels are written--as life is lived--One Day At A Time.
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Lawrence Block |
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1b4c676
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The short story, I should point out, is perforce a labor of love in today's literary world; there's precious little economic incentive to write one...
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writing
short-story
writers
short-stories
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Lawrence Block |
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d59ad14
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there is no better way to learn how to write than by writing a novel.
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Lawrence Block |
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88f14ff
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Booze and tobacco and lots of sex. It keeps a lad young.
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Lawrence Block |
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c635cd0
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Take care. It seems to me that people have only been saying that phrase on parting for the past few years or so. All of a sudden everyone started to say it, as if the whole country abruptly recognized that ours is a world which demands caution.
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Lawrence Block |
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e2377f3
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What time is it?" "Time?" "Time." "Oh," She said. "A quarter to four. Mr. Markham, something terrible has happened." She didn't have to tell me that. Something perfectly dreadful had happened, by God. Someone had called me in the middle of the bloody night."
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Lawrence Block |
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d8b4b3a
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Cain said he wasn't Abel's keeper. Are those our only choices, keeper or killer?
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Lawrence Block |
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0c43ff0
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fiction works because a part of the mind forgets that it's fiction while we're reading it.
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Lawrence Block |
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f2b8cbb
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As my grandmother used to say, if you've got nothing good to say about someone, let's hear it.
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Lawrence Block |
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4924f01
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Your unconscious mind takes the things you can't handle and plays with them while you sleep until some of the sharp corners are worn off.
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Lawrence Block |
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651fc9a
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There are eight million stories in the naked city," he intoned. "You remember that program? Used to be on television some years back." "I remember." "They had that line at the end of every show. 'There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.' " "I remember it." "Eight million stories," he said. "You know what you got in this city, this fucked-up toilet of a naked fucking city? You know what you got? You got e..
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Lawrence Block |
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b276a40
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Sometimes it's a dog-eat-dog world and the rest of the time it's the other way around.
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Lawrence Block |
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75c5f42
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I stood for a moment, letting my ears do the walking, and then I gave the bell a thorough ring and waited thirty thoughtful seconds before ringing it again. And that, let me assure you, is not a waste of time. Public institutions throughout the fifty states provide food and clothing and shelter for lads who don't ring the bell first.
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Lawrence Block |
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76f33bb
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Many of us may not know too much about our characters, but we tell the reader altogether too much.
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Lawrence Block |
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b0bc558
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We're all whirling merrily through the void on a dying planet, and gay people are just doing their usual number, being shamelessly trendy as always. Right out in front on the cutting edge of death.
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Lawrence Block |
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0e88053
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The New Your energy goes beyond anything you'll find anywhere else. It's too much for some people and it grinds them down, but it lifts up and animates the rest of us.
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individuality
inspiration
sadness
life
philosophy
knowledge-of-self
living-in-a-city
security
human-nature
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Lawrence Block |
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f08f656
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I settled for a cup of coffee. Only it wasn't coffee. It was a coffee substitute made by grinding up dandelion roots. The idea was that it wouldn't keep you awake, and it's always seemed to me that the only thing coffee really has going for it is that it will keep you awake.
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Lawrence Block |
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c46203c
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And, as long as you can make yourself go on choosing the pain over the relief, you can keep going.
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Lawrence Block |
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f93241a
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Life, I'd heard someone say, is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. It seemed to me that it was both at once, even for those of us who don't do much of either.
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Lawrence Block |
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88b055b
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Martin Greer Galton had ceased troubling his fellow man in 1964, when a cerebral aneurysm achieved what most of his acquaintances and business associates would have dearly loved to have had a hand in.
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Lawrence Block |