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9ed553c
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Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.
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rebels
tyrants
power
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Tobias Wolff |
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580827f
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a true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.
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writing
life
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Tobias Wolff |
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27cfe3e
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When we are green, still half-created, we believe that our dreams are rights, that the world is disposed to act in our best interests, and that falling and dying are for quitters. We live on the innocent and monstrous assurance that we alone, of all the people ever born, have a special arrangement whereby we will be allowed to stay green forever
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Tobias Wolff |
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8c79f2e
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Knowing that everything comes to an end is a gift of experience, a consolation gift for knowing that we ourselves are coming to an end. Before we get it we live in a continuous present, and imagine the future as more of that present. Happiness is endless happiness, innocent of its own sure passing. Pain is endless pain.
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Tobias Wolff |
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568379d
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The beauty of a fragment is that it still supports the hope of brilliant completeness.
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longing
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Tobias Wolff |
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bd67998
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In the very act of writing I felt pleased with what I did. There was the pleasure of having words come to me, and the pleasure of ordering them, re-ordering them, weighing one against another. Pleasure also in the imagination of the story, the feeling that it could mean something. Mostly I was glad to find out that I could write at all. In writing you work toward a result you won't see for years, and can't be sure you'll ever see. It takes ..
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writing
motivation
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Tobias Wolff |
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37744d0
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You boys know what tropism is, it's what makes a plant grow toward the light. Everything aspires to the light. You don't have to chase down a fly to get rid of it - you just darken the room, leave a crack of light in a window, and out he goes. Works every time. We all have that instinct, that aspiration. Science can't dim that. All science can do is turn out the false lights so the true light can get us home.
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Tobias Wolff |
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aa6e069
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We even talked like Hemingway characters, though in travesty, as if to deny our discipleship: That is your bed, and it is a good bed, and you must make it and you must make it well. Or: Today is the day of the meatloaf. The meatloaf is swell. It is swell but when it is gone the not-having meatloaf will be tragic and the meatloaf man will not come anymore.
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humor
imitation
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Tobias Wolff |
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f70f619
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When your power comes from others, on approval, you are their slave. Never sacrifice yourselves - never! Whoever urges you to self-sacrifice is worse than a common murderer, who at least cuts your throat himself, without persuading YOU to do it.
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Tobias Wolff |
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1f7071f
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I was giving up-- , as people liked to say, meaning the same thing. Being realistic made me feel bitter.
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Tobias Wolff |
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7e9e5b2
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Rhyme is bullshit. Rhyme says that everything works out in the end. All harmony and order. When I see a rhyme in a poem, I know I'm being lied to. Go ahead, laugh! It's true--rhyme's a completely bankrupt device. It's just wishful thinking. Nostalgia.
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Tobias Wolff |
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0134f59
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Lose Faith. Pray anyway. Persist. We are made to persist, to complete the whole tour. That's how we find out who we are.
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Tobias Wolff |
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ade4d05
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I'm a survivor, " I said. But I didn't think that claim would carry much weight in an obituary."
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irony
humor
epitaph
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Tobias Wolff |
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c1dcc31
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The bullet is already in the brain; it won't be outrun forever, or charmed to a halt. In the end it will do its work and leave the troubled skull behind, dragging its comet's tail of memory and hope and talent and love into the marble hall of commerce.
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Tobias Wolff |
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6f45b3b
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Reasons always came with a purpose, to give the appearance of a struggle between principle and desire. Principle had power only until you found what you had to have.
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Tobias Wolff |
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66984fc
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Why were Jack and his brother digging post holes? A fence there would run parallel to the one that already enclosed the farmyard. The Welches had no animals to keep in or out - a fence there could serve no purpose. Their work was pointless. Years later, while I was waiting for a boat to take me across the river, I watched two Vietnamese women methodically hitting a discarded truck tire with sticks. They did it for a good long while, and wer..
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meaning
uselessness
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Tobias Wolff |
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6653959
|
You felt it as a depth of ease in certain boys, their innate, affable assurance that they would not have to struggle for a place in the world; that is already reserved for them.
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Tobias Wolff |
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49a195f
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I've allowed some of these points to stand, because this is a book of memory, and memory has its own story to tell. But I have done my best to make it tell a truthful story.
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story
writing
nonfiction
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Tobias Wolff |
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70ee13e
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And in my heart I despised the life I led in Seattle. I was sick of it and had no idea how to change it. I thought that in Chinook, away from Taylor and Silver, away from Marian, away from people who had already made up their minds about me, I could be different. I could introduce myself as a scholar-athlete, a boy of dignity and consequence, and without any reason to doubt me people would believe I was that boy, and thus allow me to be tha..
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Tobias Wolff |
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3845a99
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He did not remember when everything began to remind him of something else.
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Tobias Wolff |
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7482287
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Nor did Anders remember seeing a woman leap to her death from the building opposite his own just days after his daughter was born. He did not remember shouting, "Lord have mercy!" He did not remember deliberately crashing his father's car in to a tree, of having his ribs kicked in by three policemen at an anti-war rally, or waking himself up with laughter. He did not remember when he began to regard the heap of books on his desk with boredo..
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Tobias Wolff |
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3225543
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Without pandering to your presumed desire to identify with the hero of a story, they made you feel that what mattered to the writer had consequence for you, too.
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Tobias Wolff |
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98f204a
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Happiness is endless hapiness, innocent of its own sure passing. Pain is endless pain.
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Tobias Wolff |
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f6fad66
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You can't be selfish. But we men-it's a wonder we forget ourselves long enough to buy a birthday card. As for love... we can love, but we're always forgetting.
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Tobias Wolff |
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438ff83
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It was like fishing a swamp, where you feel the tug of something that at first seems promising and then resistant and finally hopeless as you realize that you've snagged the bottom, that you have the whole planet on the other end of your line.
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Tobias Wolff |
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86da3df
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That room - once you enter it, you never really leave. You can forget you're there, you can go on as if you hold the reins, that the course of your life, yeah even its length, will reflect the force of your character and the wisdom of your judgments. And then you hit an icy path on a turn one sunny March day and the wheel in your hands becomes a joke and you no more than a spectator to your own dreamy slide toward the verge, and then you re..
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Tobias Wolff |
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cb8c7d2
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I recognized no obstacle to miraculous change but the incredulity of others. This was an idea that died hard, if it ever really died at all.
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Tobias Wolff |
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6d38bf7
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Getting from La Jolla to Alta Vista State Hospital isn't easy, unless you have a car or a breakdown. April's Father had a breakdown and they got him there in no time.
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mental-breakdown
transportation
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Tobias Wolff |
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f06fa7a
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The bullet is already in the brain; it won't be outrun forever, or charmed to a halt. In the end it will do its work and leave the troubled skull behind, dragging its comet's tail of memory and hope and talent and love into the marble hall of commerce. That can't be helped. But for now Anders can still make time
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Tobias Wolff |
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116559c
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Say you've just read Faulkner's 'Barn Burning'. Like the son in the story, you've sensed the faults in your father's character. Thinking about them makes you uncomfortable, left alone you'd probably close the book and move on to other thoughts. But instead you are taken in hand by a tall, brooding man with a distinguished limp who involves you and a roomful of other boys in the consideration of what it means to be a son. The loyalty that is..
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writing
loyalty
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Tobias Wolff |
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aee3c9f
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Want! You must want something. What do you want?
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Tobias Wolff |
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57cf6d5
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an zndgy r khh b`th nwshtn myshwd nmytwn rwy khGdh awrd. an zndgy by ankhh khwd nwysndh bdnd bh pysh myrwd. frG z shtGlt fkhry w hyhw, dr gwdlhyy `myq w trykh khh khTrt shbHwr bhkhTr m dr anj nbrd mykhnnd, ykhdygr r z p drmyawrnd w dr pyn khh chndtshn bqy mymnnd dr pysh chshm m Zhr myshwnd, m b hmn brkhwrd by`tnyy mwjh myshwnd khh pyshkhdmth hngm awrdn fnjny qhwhy Dfh.
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Tobias Wolff |
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c9ecd67
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We didn't know it then," Hooper said. "We used to talk about how when we got back in the world we were going to do this and we were going to do that. Back in the world we were going to have it made. But ever since then it's been nothing but confusion." Hooper took the cigarette case from his pocket but didn't open it. He leaned forward on the table. "Everything was clear," he said. "You learned what you had to know and you forgot the rest...
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Tobias Wolff |
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5b27df3
|
But for now Anders can still make time. Time for the shadows to lengthen on the grass, time for the tethered dog to bark at the flying ball, time for the boy in right field to smack his sweat-blackened mitt and softly chant, They is, they is, they is.
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Tobias Wolff |
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6954114
|
And I learned that it's a bad idea to curse if you're in trouble, but a good idea to sing, if you can.
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experience
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Tobias Wolff |
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9ab1b29
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I am thinking of Achilles' grief, he said. That famous, terrible, grief. Let me tell you boys something. Such grief can only be told in form. Form is everything. Without it you've got nothing but a stubbed-toe cry--sincere, maybe, for what that's worth, but with no depth or carry. No echo. You may have a grievance but you do not have grief, and grievances are for petitions, not poetry.
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Tobias Wolff |
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71332a2
|
We didn't know it then,' Hooper said. 'We used to talk about how when we got back in the world we were going to do this and we were going to do that. Back in the world we were going to have it made. But ever since then it's been nothing but confusion.' Hooper took the cigarette case from his pocket but didn't open it. He leaned forward on the table. 'Everything was clear,' he said. 'You learned what you had to know and you forgot the rest...
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Tobias Wolff |
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05c8803
|
That room--once you enter it, you never really leave. You can forget you're there, you can go on as if you hold the reins, that the course of your life, yea even its length, will reflect the force of your character and the wisdom of your judgments. And then you hit an icy patch on a turn one sunny March day and the wheel in your hands becomes a joke and you no more than a spectator to your own dreamy slide toward the verge, and then you rem..
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trouble
|
Tobias Wolff |
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2ce5c26
|
Because she had been involved with other people , and other people muddied the water.
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Tobias Wolff |
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f6722f0
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There is only one thing you have to know about the future: everything gets worse.
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Tobias Wolff |
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0482d7c
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It was good to be alone. Really alone, without other people around you to let you imagine that your life had mingled with theirs. But that never was true. Even together, people were as solitary as cows in a field chewing their own cud.
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Tobias Wolff |
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7601711
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They'll die, and then they'll be dead.
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Tobias Wolff |
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817c280
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Most of our desires are cliches, right? Ready to wear, one size fits all. I doubt if it's even possible to have an original desire anymore.
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Tobias Wolff |
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f04da9a
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Memory is a dream to begin with.
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Tobias Wolff |