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777050a
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Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish.
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Tom Perrotta |
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ecb25c1
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He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.
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Tom Perrotta |
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4682ac2
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After all, what was adult life but one moment of weakness piled on top of another? Most people just fell in line like obedient little children, doing exactly what society expected of them at any given moment, all the while pretending that they'd actually made some sort of choice.
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pretense
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Tom Perrotta |
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d4273e5
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From a distance, it makes perfect sense that the people and the things you think will save you are the very ones that have the power to disappoint you most bitterly, but up close it can hit you as a bewildering surprise.
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Tom Perrotta |
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4e375e9
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It's not the cheating. It's the hunger for an alternative. The refusal to accept unhappiness.
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Tom Perrotta |
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ce7ea4c
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There's not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it. (67)
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Tom Perrotta |
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0efa432
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Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.
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Tom Perrotta |
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3fcdd19
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Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.
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life
existentialism
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Tom Perrotta |
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d338b86
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It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.
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silence
life
connection
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Tom Perrotta |
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cf4ae74
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That's why we get involved with other people, right? Not just for their bodies, but for everything else, too - their dreams and their scars and their stories.
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people
dreams
involved
scars
stories
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Tom Perrotta |
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4f25aa1
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To this day, she's still sad. Because there's not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it. I'm just saying that I took the pain that was inside of her at that moment and made it my own. And it didn't hurt me at all.
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mourning
human-nature
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Tom Perrotta |
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28b0238
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Jill felt an emptiness open inside of her as she lifted her arm, a sense that something vital was being subtracted from her life. It was always like that when somebody you cared about went away, even when you knew it was inevitable, and it probably wasn't your fault. (341)
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Tom Perrotta |
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e97682c
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If anything, he seemed a little lonely, all too ready to open his heart at the slightest sign of interst.
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Tom Perrotta |
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e3168a8
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She would be a mentor and an inspiration to girls like herself, the quiet ones who'd sleepwalked their way through high school, knowing nothing except that they couldn't possibly be happy with any of the choices the world seemed to be offering them.
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Tom Perrotta |
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d715067
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Because, really, what was worse than lying wide-awake in the dark, watching your life drip away, one irreplaceable minute after another?
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Tom Perrotta |
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4b7e04e
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Things change all the time - abruptly, unpredictably, and often for no good reason. But knowing that didn't do you that much good, apparently.
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life
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Tom Perrotta |
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8ad1086
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Meg was going to have to learn for herself what Laurie had figured out over the summer -- that it was better to leave well enough alone, to avoid unnecessary encounters with people you'd left behind, to not keep poking at that sore tooth with the tip of your tongue. Not because you didn't love them anymore, but because you did, and because that love was useless now, just another dull ache in your phantom limb.
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Tom Perrotta |
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d3c9ddf
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I'm halfway through my life, and as far as I can tell, the real lesson of the past isn't that I made some mistakes, it's that I didn't make nearly enough of them. I doubt I'll be lying on my deathbed in forty or fifty years, congratulating myself on the fact that I never had sex in an airplane with a handsome Italian businessman, or patting myself on the back for all those years of involuntary celibacy I endured after my divorce. If recent ..
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Tom Perrotta |
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f06a98e
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We all basically live in a world that we define by the people who have disappeared.
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Tom Perrotta |
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5b9be0f
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She took care of evyone with the same no-nonsense air of friendliness and good cheer that made her seem so paradoxically wholesome, as if she were convinced that being a slut and being a really nice person were just two things that naturally went together.
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Tom Perrotta |
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e7614c5
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I've matured. I have a much higher tolerance for boredom.
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matured
tolerance
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Tom Perrotta |
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f5a101d
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Back then, when everybody thought the world would last forever, nobody had time for anything.
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world
nobody-had-time
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Tom Perrotta |
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bd1e986
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It felt good, the whole family together on a sunny morning in a wholesome environment. If it hadn't been for the warshiping God part, he would have happily attended church on a regular basis.
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Tom Perrotta |
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6acc8ef
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He knew for a fact that it was possible to fall and just keep falling.
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possible
falling
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Tom Perrotta |
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bca4599
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Within a couple of weeks of starting the Ph.D. program, though, she discovered that she'd booked passage on a sinking ship. There aren't any jobs, the other students informed her; the profession's glutted with tenured old men who won't step aside for the next generation. While the university's busy exploiting you for cheap labor, you somehow have to produce a boring thesis that no one will read, and find someone willing to publish it as a b..
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life
graduate-school
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Tom Perrotta |
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5ddded9
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It felt like religious kitsch, as tacky as a black velvet painting, the kind of fantasy that appealed to people who ate too much fried food, spanked their kids, and had no problem with the theory that their loving God invented AIDS to punish the gays.
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Tom Perrotta |
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a68dfeb
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He'd never had to make the adjustments and compromises other people accepted early in their romantic careers; never had a chance to learn the lesson that Sarah taught him everyday--that beauty was only a part of it, and not even the most important part, that there were transactions between people that occurred on some mysterious level beneath the skin, or maybe even beyond the body.
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Tom Perrotta |
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05e9cb5
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When your words are futile, you're better off keeping them to yourself, or never even thinking them in the first place.
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Tom Perrotta |
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ec6e2e9
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Memory has a way of distorting the past, of making certain events seem larger and more significant in retrospect than they ever could have been at the time they occured.
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Tom Perrotta |
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83d7715
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They both seemed to understand that describing it was beyond their powers, the gratitude that spreads through your body when a burden gets lifted, and the sense of homecoming that follows, when you suddenly remember what it feels like to be yourself.
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gratitude
homecoming
yourself
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Tom Perrotta |
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eb9c7fb
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Something had happened to him ove the past couple of years, something to do with being home with Aaron, sinking into the rhythm of a kid's day. The little tasks, the small pleasures. The repetition that goes beyond boredom and becomes a kind of peace. You do it long enough, and the adult world starts to drift away. You can't catch up with it, not even if you try.
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Tom Perrotta |
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3589019
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I'm only human, she told herself. There's not enough room in my heart for everyone.
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human
heart
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Tom Perrotta |
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66224a2
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It's like the human race has been programmed for misery.
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Tom Perrotta |
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736f96e
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She told her therapist it reminded her of coming home the summer after her freshman year at Rutgers, stepping back into the warm bath of family and friends, loving it for a week or two, and then feeling trapped, dying to return to school, missing her roommates and her cute new boyfriend, the classes and the parties and the giggly talks before bed, understanding for the first time that was her real life now, that , despite everything she'..
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transitions
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Tom Perrotta |
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51ea090
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Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.
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tragedy
life
news
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Tom Perrotta |
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2443781
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No, it's just like when you're dead and you try to remember being alive, it'll be like thinking of winter on the hottest day of the year. You'll know it's true, but you won't really believe it.
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Tom Perrotta |
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db4f5db
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She felt strong and blissfully empty gliding through the crisp November air, enjoying the intermittent warmth of the sun as it filtered down through the overhanging trees, which were mostly stripped of their foliage. It was that trashy, post-Halloween part of the fall, yellow and orange leaves littering the ground
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Tom Perrotta |
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af26e67
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It's a matter of dignity," the Chief explained. "At a certain point, that's all you have left."
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left
point
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Tom Perrotta |
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1648cfd
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Abstinence is perfectly reasonable in theory," Gregory said, "It just doesn't work in practice. It's like dieting. You can go a day or two, maybe even a week. But eventually that pizza just smells too good."
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Tom Perrotta |
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dc60bc5
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She wasn't a tragic widow, after all, just another woman betrayed by a selfish man. It was a smaller, more familiar role, and a lot easier to play.
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Tom Perrotta |
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a9eb67a
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We're agnostics, she used to tell her kids, back when they were little and needed a way to define themselves to their Catholic and Jewish and Unitarian friends. We don't know if there's a God, and nobody else does, either. They might say they do, but they really don't.
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Tom Perrotta |
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6adcfc1
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Today was the dance contest, the one where Squidward takes over Spongebob's body...During the competition, Squidward gets a cramp and Spongebob's body ends up writhing on the floor in agony. The audience thinks this is pretty cool and gives him First Prize. Quite a metaphor. The person in the most pain wins. Does that mean I get a Blue Ribbon?
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Tom Perrotta |
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9564f78
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The thing was to wear a bathing suit and look good in it, to somehow make yourself worthy of the scenario you were volunteering for.
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Tom Perrotta |
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b281b80
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I could spend the whole afternoon telling you about him, but it's not gonna do much good, is it? You never smelled his hair after he just got out of the bath, or carried him from the car after he'd fallen asleep on the way home, or heard the way he laughed when someone tickled him. So you'll just have to take my word for it: He was a great kid and he made you glad to be alive.
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bittersweet-memories
joy-of-having-a-child
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Tom Perrotta |