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408a9a3
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'And so we exchange privacy for intimacy. We gamble with it, hoping that by exposing ourselves, someone will find a way in. This is why the human animal will always be vulnerable: because it wants to be.'
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lexicon
privacy
vulnerability
intimacy
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Max Barry |
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181884f
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She didn't really enjoy reading but she liked how the books were clues. Each one a piece in a puzzle. Even when they didn't fit together, they revealed a little more about what kind of picture she was making.
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reading
lexicon
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Max Barry |
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a6c030f
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He'd basically fallen in love with her on the spot. Well, no, that wasn't accurate; that implied a binary state, a shifting from not-love to love, remaining static thereafter, and what he'd done with Bronte was fall and fall, increasingly faster the closer they drew, like planets drawn to each other's gravitational force. Doomed, he guessed, the same way.
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love
lexicon
eliot
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Max Barry |
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47e9030
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"What was it Like?" "What was what like?" he said, although he knew. "Quick, I imagine. But you must have perceived something. A split second of vanishing awareness. A grasping at a shrinking light." "It was like being fucked in the brain."
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poets
lexicon
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Max Barry |
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3e75fdb
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'Two things.' 'Name them. I am instructing you to name them.' 'I don't think you've been in love. Not recently, anyway. I'm not sure you remember what it's like. It compromises you. It takes over your body. Like a bareword. I think love is a bareword. That's the first thing.' Yeats didn't react. If anything, he seemed baffled. 'The second thing is I wouldn't characterize Harry as indecisive and untrained with weapons.'
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love
barewords
underestimation
lexicon
compromise
|
Max Barry |
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e3121db
|
"You went to school," Lee said. "I mean, at some point. And it didn't suit you very well. They wanted to teach you things you didn't care about. Dates and math and trivia about dead presidents. They didn't teach persuasion. Your ability to persuade is the single most important determinant of your quality of life, and they didn't cover that at all. Well, we do. And we're looking for students with natural aptitude."
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lexicon
persuasion
school
|
Max Barry |
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597cb7a
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'Your brain doesn't process language quite like other people. Why that is, I have no idea.' 'I have a superior brain?' 'Uh,' Eliot said, 'I wouldn't go that far.'
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lexicon
mind-over-matter
language
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Max Barry |
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6923020
|
He shook his head to clear it, but the world grew dark and angry and would not stay upright. The world did not like to be shaken. He understood that now. He wouldn't shake it again. He felt his feet sliding away from him on silent roller skates and reached for a wall for support. The wall cursed and dug its fingers into his arm, and was probably not a wall. It was probably a person.
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lexicon
|
Max Barry |
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595bcab
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Wil ate without enthusiasm. His bacon tasted like nothing. Like a dead animal, fried. His eggs, aborted chickens.
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appetite
lexicon
food
|
Max Barry |
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d5bb84d
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Over time, there would be less and less of him and more of the tumor. His brain was being eaten by God. He left the clinic in fine spirits. He had no intention of removing the tumor. It was the perfect solution to his dilemma: how to feed his body's desire for intimacy. He was delusional, of course. There was no higher presence filling him with love, connecting him to all things. It only felt that way. But that was fine. That was ideal. He would not have trusted a God outside his head.
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god
lexicon
tumor
delusions
intimacy
|
Max Barry |