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acdb88d
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And there comes a time in your life when you realize that if you don't take the opportunity to be happy, you may never get another chance again.
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Richard Russo |
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4b68c67
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What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?
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friendship
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Richard Russo |
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5232545
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After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble.
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Richard Russo |
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dac7c7e
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People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.
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Richard Russo |
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eb5bb04
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Not giving a shit, she decided, is like the defrost option on a car's heater that miraculously unfogs the windshield, allowing you to see where you're headed.
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Richard Russo |
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5a4ca6b
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Which is why we have spouses and children and parents and colleagues and friends, because someone has to know us better than we know ourselves. We need them to tell us. We need them to say, "I know you, Al. You are not the kind of man who."
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Richard Russo |
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704866c
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I'm about to fuck up, he thought clearly, and his next thought was, but I don't have to. This was followed closely by a third thought, the last of this familiar sequence, which was, but I'm going to anyway.
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life
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Richard Russo |
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00930ca
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Have you ever noticed that when people use the expression 'I have to say', what follows usually needn't be said?
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Richard Russo |
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426f949
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The line of gray along the horizon is brighter now, and with the coming light I feel a certainty: that there is, despite our wild imaginings, only one life. The ghostly others, no matter how real they seem, no matter how badly we need them, are phantoms. The one life we're left with is sufficient to fill and refill our imperfect hearts with joy, and then to shatter them. And it never, ever lets up.
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Richard Russo |
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2777822
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The other possibility was that there was no right thing to say, that the choice wasn't between right and wrong but between wrong, more wrong, and as wrong as you can get.
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Richard Russo |
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a4c986e
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My God, he couldn't help thinking, how terrible it is to be that age, to have emotions so near the surface that the slightest turbulence causes them to boil over. That, very simply, was what adulthood must be all about -- acquiring the skill to bury things more deeply. Out of sight and, whenever possible, out of mind.
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Richard Russo |
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05ab03b
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Don't even the best and most fortunate of lives hint at other possibilities, at a different kind of sweetness and, yes, bitterness too? Isn't this why we can't help feeling cheated, even when we know we haven't been?
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Richard Russo |
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5d40ddd
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As I drift back into sleep, I can't help thinking that it's a wonderful thing to be right about the world. To weigh the evidence, always incomplete, and correctly intuit the whole, to see the world in a grain of sand, to recognize its beauty, its simplicity, its truth. It's as close as we get to God in this life, and reside in the glow of such brief flashes of understanding, fully awake, sometimes for two or three seconds, at peace with our..
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Richard Russo |
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0848d51
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Truth be told, I'm not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it's been my experience that most people don't want to be entertained. They want to be comforted. And, of course, my idea of entertaining might not be yours. I'm in complete agreement with all those people who say, regarding movies, 'I just want to be entertained.' This populist position is much derided by my academic colleagues as simpleminded and unsophisticated, evi..
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humor
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Richard Russo |
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df89c9b
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To expect reason is where the fallacy lies.
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Richard Russo |
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f3644d3
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They stayed, many of them, because staying was easier and less scary than leaving,
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Richard Russo |
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a7ed82b
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In the end it all came down to companionship, to friendship, to sacrifice, to compromise.
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Richard Russo |
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77996c3
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He looks like he could be taken in a fight. Not by me, but by somebody. Not anyone in Humanities, probably.
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Richard Russo |
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3e2923d
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I've always known that there's more going on inside me than finds its way into the world, but this is probably true of everyone. Who doesn't regret that he isn't more fully understood?
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Richard Russo |
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08c9b1a
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The world is divided between kids who grow up wanting to be their parents and those like us, who grow up wanting to be anything but. Neither group ever succeeds.
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Richard Russo |
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a3bbdd4
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To his surprise, she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, a kiss so full of affection that it dispelled the awkwardness, even as it caused Miles' heart to plummet, because all kisses are calibrated, and this one revealed the great chasm between affection and love.
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Richard Russo |
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1d832e5
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Just because things happen slow doesn't mean you'll be ready for them. If they happened fast, you'd be alert for all kinds of suddenness, aware that speed was trump. "Slow" works in an altogether different principle, on the deceptive impression that there's plenty of time to prepare, which conceals the central fact, that no matter how slow things go, you'll always be slower."
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speed
slow
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Richard Russo |
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ccb3897
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That afternoon I came to understand that one of the deepest purposes of intellectual sophistication is to provide distance between us and our most disturbing personal truths and gnawing fears.
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Richard Russo |
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ceb8d47
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It pleased him to imagine God as someone like his mother, someone beleagured by too many responsibilities, too dog-tired to monitor an energetic boy every minute of the day, but who, out of love and fear for his safety, checked in on him whenever she could. Was this so crazy? ...Miles liked the idea of a God who, when He at last had the oppotunity to return His attention to His children, might shake His head with wonder and mutter, "Jesus. ..
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Richard Russo |
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7ff4d85
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For fairness and loyalty, however important to the head, were issues that could seldom be squared in the human heart, at the deepest depths of which lay the mystery of affection, of love, which you either felt or you didn't, pure as instinct, which seized you, not the other way around, making a mockery of words like "should" and "ought". The human heart, where compromise could not be struck, not ever. Where transgressions exacted a terrible..
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Richard Russo |
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dd11d2a
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Who but an English professor would threaten to kill a duck a day and hold up a goose as an example?
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Richard Russo |
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ef6d426
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It was a scary thought. A man could be surrounded by poetry reading and not know it.
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poetry
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Richard Russo |
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322dd3f
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The sad, fucking truth was that no matter who you are, you never, ever, get your fill.
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Richard Russo |
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96f5866
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We don't forgive people because they deserve it," she said. "We forgive them because we deserve it."
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Richard Russo |
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69da3c6
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An imperfect human heart, perfectly shattered, was her conclusion. A condition so common as to be virtually universal, rendering issues of right and wrong almost incidental.
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morality
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Richard Russo |
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ba26717
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It's possible to overlook character flaws of in-laws for the simple reason that you feel neither responsible for them nor genetically implicated.
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Richard Russo |
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1a35e39
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One of the odd things about middle age...was the strange decisions a man discovers he's made by not really making them.
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Richard Russo |
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d14fd25
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I told him the truth, that I loved him and didn't regret anything about our lives together. But do we ever 'tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God' as my father used to say, to those we love? Or even to ourselves? Don't even the best and most fortunate of lives hint at other possibilities, at a different kind of sweetness and, yes, bitterness too? Isn't this why we can't help feeling cheated, even when we..
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Richard Russo |
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dbf7a2e
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Everybody looked at Sully suspiciously. A rumor that he had burned up in the blaze had been circulating, and people had quickly adjusted to the idea of profound human tragedy. They were reluctant to give it up, Sully could tell. He smiled apologetically at the crowd.
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humor
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Richard Russo |
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867451b
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He'd meant to forgive his brother, maybe even imagined he had. He'd also meant to learn to trust him, but instead merely fell into the habit of waiting for him to fuck up again.
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Richard Russo |
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b4a5c00
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To his surprise he...discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at something...that you cared about a great deal.
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Richard Russo |
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ea2d392
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he had to comfort himself with the firm conviction that most of what he objected to in Mohawk and the world at large was not the result of people reading the wrong books, but rather of not reading any at all.
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Richard Russo |
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bc05626
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I must be losing patience with my fellow humans," Miss Beryl went on. "Anymore I'm all for executing people who are mean to children. I used to favor just cutting off their feet. Now I want to rid the world of them completely. If this keeps up I'll be voting Republican soon."
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Richard Russo |
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62ebc20
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Knowing and knowing what to do about it were two different things.
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Richard Russo |
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19d9c5a
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We wear the chains we forge in life,
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Richard Russo |
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a0f435b
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You can't possibly judge your ability to control something until you've experienced the extremes of its capabilities. Do you understand?
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extremes
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Richard Russo |
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d500b43
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aware, as always, that the truth isn't much of substitute for a good answer.
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Richard Russo |
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0295ea5
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Bullshitting god would be Max's plan in a nutshell. Miles could even guess his father's opening gambit. He'd point out to God that if He expected better results, He ought to have given Max better character to work with, instead of sending him into battle so poorly equipped.
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Richard Russo |
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a3993be
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The cutthroat savagery of high school romance inspired in nearly all adults a collective amnesia. Having survived it themselves, they locked those memories far away in some dark chamber of their subconscious where things that are too terrible to contemplate are permanently stored.
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Richard Russo |