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3e07206
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So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days, you can hear their chorus rushing past: IwasabeautifulgirlPleasedon'tgoItoobelievemybodyismadeofglass-I'veneverlovedanyoneIthinkofmyselfasfunnyForgiveme.... There was a time when it wasn't uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people carried a little bunch of string in their pockets, but people considered loudmouths had no less need for it, since those used to being overheard by everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone. The physical distance between two people using a string was often small; sometimes the smaller the distance, the greater the need for the string. The practice of attaching cups to the ends of string came much later. Some say it is related to the irrepressible urge to press shells to our ears, to hear the still-surviving echo of the world's first expression. Others say it was started by a man who held the end of a string that was unraveled across the ocean by a girl who left for America. When the world grew bigger, and there wasn't enough string to keep the things people wanted to say from disappearing into the vastness, the telephone was invented. Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person's silence.
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love
poignant
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Nicole Krauss |
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15de391
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We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything.
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nationalism
poignant
pride
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William Golding |
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3c432b3
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"Delirium: "What's the name of the word for the precise moment when you realize that you've actually forgotten how it felt to make love to somebody you really liked a long time ago?" Dream: "There isn't one." Delirium: "Oh. I thought maybe there was."
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love
sandman
gaiman
poignant
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Neil Gaiman |
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1a8354b
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...you realize that you don't understand yourself any better than you understand anyone else.
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understanding
poignant
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Jonathan Tropper |
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2970cd1
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There is, after all, no pleasure like that given by a woman who really wants to see you.
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poignant
insightful
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Anthony Powell |
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21ef5bc
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She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief.
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poignant
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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8ef084a
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Later in life, I learnt that many things one may require have to be weighed against one's dignity, which can be an insuperable barrier against advancement in almost any direction. However, in those days, choice between dignity and unsatisfied curiosity was less clear to me as a cruel decision that had to be made.
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poignant
insightful
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Anthony Powell |
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4329b9c
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In his mind he fingered the necklace of the days to come.
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poignant
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Ian Fleming |
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85e8fe6
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The people they had been last summer, the person she had been--Dicey guessed she'd never be afraid again, not the way she had been all summer. She had taken care of them all, sometimes well, sometimes badly. And they had covered the distances. For most of the summer, they had been unattached. Nobody knew who they were or what they were doing. It didn't matter what they did, as long as they all stayed together. Dicey remembered that feeling, of having things pretty much her own way. And she remembered the feelings of danger. It was a little bit like being a wild animal, she thought to herself. Dicey missed that wildness. She knew she would never have it again. And she missed the sense of Dicey Tillerman against the whole world and doing all right.
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introspective
growing-up
poignant
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Cynthia Voigt |
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52330aa
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She is here. And she comes to you, and she does not speak, and the others do not notice her, and she takes your hand, and you ready yourself to die, eyes open, aware this is all an illusion, a last aroma cast up by the chemical stew that is your brain, which will soon cease to function, ad there will be nothing, and you are ready, ready to die well, ready to die like a man, like a woman, like a human, for despite all else you have loved, you have loved your father and your mother and your brother and your sister and your son and, yes, your ex-wife and you have loved the pretty girl, you have been beyond yourself, and so you have courage, and you have dignity, and you have calmness in the face of terror, and awe, and the pretty girl holds your hand, and you contain her, and this book, and me writing it, and I too contain you, who may not even be born, you inside me inside you, though not in a creepy way, and so may you, may I, may we, so may all of us confront the end.
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death
life
love
inspirational
poignant
self-help
old-age
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Mohsin Hamid |
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59a58ad
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You might, without my crediting it, fall deeply in love and forever, with some warped hunchback whelped in the gutter. I should equally stop you from taking him.
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emotional
poignant
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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f54b38a
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For it is now to us itself ancient; and yet its maker was telling of things already old and weighted with regret, and he expended his art in making keen that touch upon the heart which sorrows have that are both poignant and remote.
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loss
sorrow
writing
beowulf
poignant
regret
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J.R.R. Tolkien |
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64e7a7b
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He was the friend of my life. You know, you only have one friend like that; there can't be two.
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friendship
epigraph
once-in-a-lifetime
tender
bittersweet
friend
poignant
sad
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James Salter |