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60067f1
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Have I mentioned that I expect death around every turn, that every blue sky has a safe sailing out of it, that every bus runs me over, that every low, mean syllable uttered in my direction seems to intimate the violence of murder, that every family seems like an opportunity for ruin and every marriage a ceremony into which calamity will fall and hearts will be broken and lives destroyed and people branded by the mortifications of love?
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Rick Moody |
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c0c8000
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The past was so past it hurt.
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Rick Moody |
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d2538f6
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Words are the oldest information storage and retrieval system ever devised. Words are probably older than the cave paintings in France, words have been here for tens of thousands of years longer than film, moving pictures, video, and digital video, and words will likely be here after those media too. When the electromagnetic pulse comes in the wake of the nuclear blast? Those computers and digital video cameras and videotape recorders that ..
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Rick Moody |
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923ab66
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People came to the desert because the stars were in the desert, and the stars had yet to be corrupted by man... The stars, it seemed, would crush man in a scenic, gravitational panorama before man would ever corrupt the stars.
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Rick Moody |
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ded877f
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If God had designed the orchestra, then the cello was His greatest accomplishment.
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god
orchestra
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Rick Moody |
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78b8742
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Fucking family. Feeble and forlorn and floundering and foolish and frustrating and functional and sad, sad. Fucking family. Fiend or foe.
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Rick Moody |
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9fed47a
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This is a quote
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Rick Moody |
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c4c3d64
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My feeling then was of forlornness, of the desperate inadequacies of this human linguistic apparatus that we employ to forestall, a little longer, aloneness, and of how futile these fumblings so often are. In the next lurch of solitude I began trying to add to the list of things not to say to someone in your marriage: Don't ever use a pen while lying on the bed; don't ever forget to put the cap back on a pen after using the pen; don't ever ..
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Rick Moody |
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3c86fc2
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It was monks who first taught the art of reading in silence. During the Dark Ages. Augustine, perhaps, was first. And silence was a tongue Elena understood. Silence was her idiom for support and caring. Silence was permissive and contemplative and nonconfrontational and there was melody to it. It was both earth and ether.
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Rick Moody |
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a0984fa
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Death was terribly durable. It was the sturdiest idea around. A body was dead, and before long it wasn't even a body anymore, it was just elements. But it was still dead.
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Rick Moody |
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abcc582
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What kind of woman was she? What kind of woman was it who called to me from that calamity on the Seventh Avenue line? What kind of woman do I love now, with a fealty that will not cease, not till my occluded arteries send their clots up to the spongy interiors in my skull and I go mute and slack? I love the kind of woman whose hair has gone gray in a not terribly flattering way, the kind who doesn't even notice how she has to keeps having t..
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women
positivity
optimism
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Rick Moody |
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a9dc420
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I am not that creative. And therefore you must be real.
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Rick Moody |
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a1c8df0
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Normally, I am a little insecure about myself without a shirt on, as my days of being attractive are now behind me.
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insecure
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Rick Moody |
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f5fa462
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The thing you did to alleviate the loneliness was to take off your clothes and touch someone, even if you didn't really know the person well.
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Rick Moody |
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14a727c
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Never the romance without the bloodshed!
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romance
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Rick Moody |
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6938b48
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I]t is things that make us happy when conversation begins to reveal itself as a paltry substitute.
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happiness
material-goods
things
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Rick Moody |
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18ba36e
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What a dreadful experience for a young boy who just wanted the company of his dad, who just wanted to whack at baseballs in the backyard with the old man, who just wanted to be taught to use a circular saw, who just wanted to learn the rudiments of five-card stud or blackjack, who just wanted to understand the precise location of the clitoris or how to pronounce clitoris, or who wanted to learn how to order meat from a waiter, or who wanted..
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Rick Moody |
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0e52466
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He seemed as though he were habitually preparing himself for something awful, and this was justified because many awful things had happened to him.
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Rick Moody |
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290d90e
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if only she hadn't agreed to wear the pink pajamas there in the Mercer Hotel. Because once I saw her in them, I loved her in the same way I love my sister, which is an impasse of the truly impassable sort.
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Rick Moody |
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902f233
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And so I replied, "You just don't know the right kind of motivational speakers!" And she: "Top answer! Top answer!" (Posted 3/3/2012)"
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Rick Moody |
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e89f695
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Maybe it was more than this. Maybe the bond that forms between people doesn't get unmade so easily. Maybe it leaves its mark for a long time.
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Rick Moody |
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8916eb9
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There should be a sex-related metric with which you could measure sex in hotels, especially the illicit variety, but of what would that metric consist? How about increments of remorse?
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sex
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Rick Moody |
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c47da68
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Linda cranked the greatest hits of heartbreak and we sat down on the carpeted floor to listen. I missed you.
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Rick Moody |
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f926cb2
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circumambulate
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Rick Moody |
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8ac7346
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If one of them wanted to go to bed well before the other one wanted to go to bed, who could object, because the day would come when they could retreat back to rugged individualism, it was right there waiting to be re-employed, and so staggered shifts should not be interpreted as some kind of loss, some kind of giving up.
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Rick Moody |
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e6827b5
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It may be one of the most beautiful hotels in the entire world. Were you to discount hotels that are constructed primarily to house sheikhs--hotels that will never house you or me--you would have to conclude that this was a truly remarkable place.
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Rick Moody |
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5808eb2
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There should be a way to test this, there should be a sex-related metric with which you could measure sex in hotels, especially the illicit variety, but of what would that metric consist?
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Rick Moody |
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738a3d1
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Which man among us is not, most of the time, possessed of the desire to curl himself into a foetal ball?
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Rick Moody |
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5c0ef16
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There are men who need to defile themselves in order to get on with their lives.
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Rick Moody |
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ef0153c
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Would ectoplasm be considered an amenity? As I have said, I personally define an amenity as a specific and unexpected add-on to the hotel experience.
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Rick Moody |
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c063fa1
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The middle is the longest in any story, and therefore the time with the most desperation.
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Rick Moody |
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d62850c
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He was a psychologist, and degrees in psychology, I find, often conceal deviant tendencies.
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Rick Moody |
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d3384ec
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As you may have noticed, here we were living in a Swedish car in the parking lot of a Swedish mega-retailer.
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Rick Moody |
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e9a4fb1
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Isn't a tangle of limbs a glorious thing to behold? Don't you wish to be in a tangle of limbs?
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tangles
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Rick Moody |
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a81ba21
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I was bent on love the way a crow is bent on a flattened squirrel.
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Rick Moody |
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e771d44
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There were just enough flaws to make her perfect.
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perfect
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Rick Moody |
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05b7656
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Demagnetizing is a fact of life.
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Rick Moody |
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0413095
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There was probably some kind of anti-compulsive psychiatric medication liberally added to this trucked-in gross of cookies so that people like me, who could not stop eating the cookies once they were offered, would not continuously sneak down to the lobby in the soul-slaughtering hours between two and four a.m. to steal six at a time, finishing most of them before getting back to the room.
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Rick Moody |
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75c9888
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there are times when no matter what we do, despite our best efforts--it's not often but it can happen--very occasionally we are going to let you down.
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Rick Moody |
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06e2615
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we broke the complimentary cookie obtained in the lobby into small pieces and flung it over the fence of the Indonesian embassy, thinking that the scheming and warlike Indonesians were probably out at the time, and in the event that the Indonesians had not fed their local squirrels.
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Rick Moody |
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897c92d
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I have found on occasion that the Italians are suspicious of the benefits of air-conditioning. Or skeptical, or resistant, or oblivious to the benefits of air-conditioning.
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Rick Moody |
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6bc60ee
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Some people like a bidet, but Mrs. Salk said she does not want to shoot water up herself from a spigot that others have also used.
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Rick Moody |
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6ab4f43
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That cigar-chomping hemorrhoidal bigot who sits astride the riding mower on the two and a quarter acres beside you, he is smart enough to spend his IRA on this stock, so why can't you? Do you want him to have something you do not?
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Rick Moody |
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b0df438
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One time I took the swing shift just to get away from her for a few weeks, I just filled in for this guy who had a back injury, and I came home when no one was awake, and then I'd just take some sleeping pills and drink a few beers. Everyone had a good laugh.
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Rick Moody |