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dcf5db0
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People surprise you, Frank, with just how fuckin stupid they are.
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stupidity
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Richard Ford |
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deee23f
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If you lose all hope, you can always find it again.
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Richard Ford |
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9d4e82e
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Then, what's the matter?' I wonder, in fact, how many times I have said that or something equal to it to a woman passing palely through my life. Love is what this means, of course. Or at least, second best: surrender. Or at the least, take some time regaling me with why you won't, and maybe by the end you will.
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men
relationships
women
surrender
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Richard Ford |
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3d96c6b
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What was our life like? I almost don't remember now. Though I remember , the space of time it occupied. And I remember it fondly.
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marriage
memories
memory
nostalgia
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Richard Ford |
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b98ced5
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Things you did. Things you never did. Things you dreamed. After a long time they run together.
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Richard Ford |
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116489c
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You're only good if you can do bad and decide not to.
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Richard Ford |
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605add9
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I know you can dream your way through an otherwise fine life, and never wake up, which is what I almost did.
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dreams
life
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Richard Ford |
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3e9dc9d
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the worst thing about regret is that it makes you duck the chance of new regret, just as you get a glimmer that nothing is worth doing unless it has the potential to fuck up your whole life.
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Richard Ford |
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50a7f05
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Life's passed along to us empty. We have to make up the happiness part.
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Richard Ford |
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564ea40
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Our ex-wifes always harbour secrets about us that make them irresistable. Until, of course, we remember who we are and what we did and why we are not married anymore.
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Richard Ford |
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df66d24
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Some idiotic things are well worth doing.
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Richard Ford |
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2c41196
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Your life doesn't mean what you have or what you get. Its what your'e willing to give up.
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Richard Ford |
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44cecdd
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Humans generally get out the gist of what they need to say right at the beginning, then spend forever qualifying, contradicting, burnishing or taking important things back. Yor rareley miss anything by cutting most people off after two sentences.
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talking
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Richard Ford |
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d255665
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Maturity, as I conceived it, was recognizing what was bad or peculiar in life, admitting it has to stay that way, and going ahead with the best of things.
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Richard Ford |
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d587b2d
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He needed me to do what sons do for their fathers: bear witness that they're substantial, that they're not hollow, not ringing absences. That they count for something when little else seems to.
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fathers
sons
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Richard Ford |
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d7c8b6f
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Most things don't stay the way they are very long.
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Richard Ford |
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1d296e2
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At the exact moment any decision seems to be being made, it's usually long after the real decision was actually made--like light we see emitted from stars.
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Richard Ford |
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82befa1
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What I know is, you have a better chance in life-of surviving it-if you tolerate loss well;manage not to be a cynic through it all;... to connect the unequal things into a whole that preserves the good,even if the good is not simple to find. We try, as my sister said. We try.
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Richard Ford |
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a981480
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She was an artist. She held opposites in her mind.
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Richard Ford |
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165771b
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Someone ... tell us what's important, because we no longer know.
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society
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Richard Ford |
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e9edfd7
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I walked out of the condos onto the flat lithesome beach this morning, and took a walk in my swimming trunks and no shirt on. And I thought that one natural effect of life is to cover you in a thin layer of . . . what? A film? A residue or skin of all the things you've done and been and said and erred at? I'm not sure. But you under it, and for a long time, and only rarely do you know it, except that for some unexpected reason or opportun..
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Richard Ford |
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45fd3f8
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Cynicism makes you feel smart, I know it, even when you aren't smart.
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Richard Ford |
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5f13fef
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For, how else to seize such an instant? How to shout out into the empty air just the right words, and on cue? Frame a moment to last a lifetime?
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Richard Ford |
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0e64fc4
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We are past the end of things now, but I don't want to leave.
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past
finality
if-only
leaving
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Richard Ford |
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e7da24c
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Loneliness, I've read, is like being in a long line, waiting to reach the front where it's promised something good will happen. Only the line never moves, and other people are always coming in ahead of you, and the front, the place where you want to be, is always farther and farther away until you no longer believe it has anything to offer you.
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Richard Ford |
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331d32d
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I'm intrigued by how ordinary behavior exists so close beside its opposite.
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literary
crime
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Richard Ford |
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855a287
|
It is no loss to mankind when one writer decides to call it a day. When a tree falls in the forest, who cares but the monkeys?
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Richard Ford |
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cbc4bac
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All we really want is to get to the point where the past can explain nothing about us and we can get on with life.
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Richard Ford |
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2498b21
|
She said that it was a mistake to have made as few superficial friends as I have done in my life, and to have concentrated only on the few things I have concentrated on--her, for one. My children, for another. Sportswriting and being an ordinary citizen. This did not leave me well enough armored for the unexpected, was her opinion. She said this was because I didn't know my parents very well, had gone to a military school, and grown up in t..
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southerners
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Richard Ford |
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195547e
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Things happen when people are not where they belong, and the world moves forward and back by that principle.
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Richard Ford |
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9cdfe65
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It's been my habit of mind, over these years, to understand that every situation in which human beings are involved can be turned on its head. Everything someone assures me to be true might not be. Every pillar of belief the world rests on may or may not be about to explode. Most things don't stay the way they are very long. Knowing this, however, has not made me cynical. Cynical means believing that good isn't possible; and I know for a fa..
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Richard Ford |
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5efb008
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Some things can't be explained. They just are. And after a while they disappear, usually forever, or become interesting in another way. Literature's consolations are always temporary, while life is quick to begin again. It is better not even to look so hard, to leave off explaining. Nothing makes me more queasy than to spend time with people who don't know that and who can't forget, and for whom such knowledge isn't a cornerstone of life.
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Richard Ford |
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e5a5c07
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What's friendship's realest measure? I'll tell you. The amount of precious time you'll squander on someone else's calamities and fuck-ups.
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Richard Ford |
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45ddf15
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In their faces--plenty of them were handsome, but ruined--I've seen the remnants of who they almost succeeded in being but failed to be, before becoming themselves.
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possibility
|
Richard Ford |
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a7fb813
|
For a time after my divorce everything began to seem profoundly ironic to me. I found myself thinking of other peoples' worries as sources of amusement and private derision which I thought about at night to make myself feel better.
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Richard Ford |
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35230af
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I thought that the difference between a successful life and an unsuccessful one, between me at that moment and all the people who owned the cars that were nosed-in to their proper places in the lot, maybe between me and that woman out in the trailers by the gold mine, was how well you were able to put things like this out of your mind and not be bothered by them, and maybe too, by how many troubles like this one you had to face in a lifetim..
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Richard Ford |
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c4749e1
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When you are sixteen you do not know what your parents know, or much of what they understand, and less of what's in their hearts. This can save you from becoming an adult too early, save your life from becoming only theirs lived over again--which is a loss. But to shield yourself--as I didn't do--seems to be an even greater error, since what's lost is the truth of your parents' life and what you should think about it, and beyond that, how y..
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Richard Ford |
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1186f8c
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I didn't know with certainty what to say about the large world, and didn't care to risk speculating. And I still don't. That we all look at it from someplace, and in some hopeful-useful way, is about all I found I could say--my best, most honest effort. And that isn't enough for literature, though it didn't bother me much. Nowadays, I'm willing to say yes to as much as I can: yes to my town, my neighborhood, my neighbor, yes to his car, her..
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Richard Ford |
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0acd710
|
The world is a more engaging and less dramatic place than writers ever give it credit for being
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Richard Ford |
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cfa92b8
|
And since that is not how it has been for a long time, you want, this time, to make it last, this glistening one moment, this cool air, this new living, so that you can preserve a feeling of it, inasmuch as when it comes again it may just be too late. You may just be too old. And in truth, of course, this may be the last time that you will ever feel this way again.
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Richard Ford |
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f29f78e
|
But to anyone reasonable, my life will seem more or less normal-under-the-microscope, full of contingencies and incongruities none of us escapes and which do little harm in an existence that otherwise goes unnoticed.
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Richard Ford |
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6de3096
|
Though possibly it-the answer-is simple: it is just low-life, some coldness in us all, some helplessness that causes us to misunderstand life when it is pure and plain, makes our existence seem like a border between two nothings, and makes us no more or less than animals who meet on the road-watchful, unforgiving, without patience or desire.
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Richard Ford |
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b9b081e
|
My greatest human flaw and strength, not surprisingly, is that I can always imagine anything--a marriage, a conversation, a government--as being different from how it is, a trait that might make one a top-notch trial lawyer or novelist or realtor, but that also seems to produce a somewhat less than reliable and morally feasible human being.)
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Richard Ford |
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2975c5b
|
Stop searching. Face the earth where you can. Literally speaking, it's all you have to go on.
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Richard Ford |