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For several years, I had been bored. Not a whining, restless child's boredom (although I was not above that) but a dense, blanketing malaise. It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously derivative (although the word as a criticism is itself derivative). We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. , the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blase: . I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I'm not a real person and neither is anyone else. I would have done anything to feel real again.
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derivative
human
personality-traits
real
secondhand-experience
seen-it-all
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Gillian Flynn |
0bb5f54
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It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life.
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ideals
nostalgia
real
truth
youth
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W. Somerset Maugham |
53386c8
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"Be careful, though." "Aren't I always?" "No, I think the word for how you usually are is 'reckless."
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real
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Veronica Roth |
99fd141
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It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you watch them on a screen.
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movies
real
reality
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anthony burgess |
78781d0
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It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.
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mind
real
what-is-on-the-inside
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Anne Brontë |
8c48ab4
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"He shook his head, just looking at me. - "What?" I asked. - "Nothing" he said. - "Why are you looking at me like that?" Augustus half smiled. "Because you`re beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence." A brief awkward silence ensued. Augustus plowed through: "I mean, particularly given that, as you so deliciously pointed out, all of this will end in oblivion and everything." I kind of scoffed or sighed or exhaled in a way that was vaguely coughy and then said, "I`m not beau-" - "You are like a millennial Natalie Portman. Like V for Vendetta Natalie Portman." - "Never seen it."
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awkward
beautiful
boy
flirt
girl
gorgeous
hazel
john-green
life
looking-at-me
love
lover
lovers
natalie-portman
real
real-life
silence
smile
smiling
the-fault-in-our-stars
turn-me-on
vendetta
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John Green The Fault in Our Stars |
2b04835
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She preferred imaginary heroes to real ones, because when tired of them, the former could be shut up in the tin kitchen till called for, and the latter were less manageable.
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imaginary
real
relationships
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Louisa May Alcott |
6e1fde5
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There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
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real
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Jean Rhys |
394bf4e
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A man who is not a father to his children can never be a real man,
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father
man
real
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Mario Puzo |
9528123
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as soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency.
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fiction
ideology
imaginary
philosophy
real
symbolic
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Slavoj Žižek |
dde930c
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The real question is, can you love the real me? Not the perfect person you want me to be, not that image you had of me, but who I really am.
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perfect
person
real
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Christine Feehan |
f9951fc
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Silk is a fine, delicate, soft, illuminating, beautiful substance. But you can never rip it! If a man takes this tender silk and attempts to tear it, and cannot tear it, is he in his right mind to say "This silk is fake! I thought it was soft, I thought it was delicate, but look, I cannot even tear it" ? Surely, this man is not in his right mind! The silk is not fake! This silk is 100% real. It's the man who is stupid!
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delicate
fake
gentle
genuine
inspirational
inspirational-life
inspirational-quotes
parable
parables
real
silk
soft
strength
strength-of-a-woman
stupidity
stupidity-of-man
wisdom
wisdom-quotes
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C. JoyBell C. |
ca802d4
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"My belief is that when you're telling the truth, you're close to God. If you say to God, "I am exhausted and depressed beyond words, and I don't like You at all right now, and I recoil from most people who believe in You," that might be the most honest thing you've ever said. If you told me you had said to God, "It is all hopeless, and I don't have a clue if You exist, but I could use a hand," it would almost bring tears to my eyes, tears of pride in you, for the courage it takes to get real-really real. It would make me want to sit next to you at the dinner table. So prayer is our sometimes real selves trying to communicate with the Real, with Truth, with the Light. It is us reaching out to be heard, hoping to be found by a light and warmth in the world, instead of darkness and cold. Even mushrooms respond to light - I suppose they blink their mushroomy eyes, like the rest of us. Light reveals us to ourselves, which is not always so great if you find yourself in a big disgusting mess, possibly of your own creation. But like sunflowers we turn toward light. Light warms, and in most cases it draws us to itself. And in this light, we can see beyond our modest receptors, to what is way beyond us, and deep inside."
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light
prayer
real
truth
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Anne Lamott |
cb69570
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Because it's kind of great, being an idea that everybody likes. But I could never be the idea to myself, not all the way. And Agloe is a place where a paper creation became real. A dot on the map became a real place, more real than the people who created the dot could never have imagined. I thought maybe the paper cutout of a girl could start becoming real here also. And it seemed like a way to tell that paper girl who cared about popularity and clothes and everything else: 'You are going to the paper towns. And you are never coming back.
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paper-town
popularity
real
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John Green |
2067336
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Damn real live people, getting in the way of peaceful ideals.
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|
ideals
live
peaceful
people
real
way
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John Scalzi |
85e21ed
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Sitting on the floor, I'd replay the past in my head. Funny, that's all I did, day after day after day for half a year, and I never tired of it. What I'd been through seemed so vast, with so many facets. Vast, but real, very real, which was why the experience persisted in towering before me, like a monument lit up at night. And the thing was, it was a monument to me.
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memories
past
real
remembering
surreal
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Haruki Murakami |
5d6f549
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"What's done is done. Say good-bye to the past, and hello to the future And we're wasting time, when already we've wasted enough. We've got everything ahead, waiting for us." Just the right words to make me feel real, alive, free! Free enough to forget thoughts of revenge." --
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alive
complete
done
everything
fin
finished
free
future
goodbyes
real
revenge
thoughts
time
waiting
wasted
wasting-time
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V.C. Andrews |
b699c1f
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We always know when we are awake that we cannot be dreaming even though when actually dreaming we feel all this may be real.
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dreaming
mystery
real
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Ruth Rendell |
e8d5948
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There are vampires. They are real, they are of our time, and they are here, close by, stalking us as we sleep...
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|
dracula
real
sleep
stalking
vampires
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Nicky Raven |
dc62081
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When your mother is made out of your dreams, anything real is bound to disappoint you.
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dream
real
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Jodi Picoult |
b1e9ae1
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You had been a paper boy to me all these years - two dimensions as a character on the page and two different, but still flat, dimensions as a person. But that night you turned out to be real.
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paper-boy
real
two-dimensions
|
John Green |
98cdf3e
|
"Let's burn our masks at midnight and as flickering flames ascend, under the witness of star-clouds, let us vow to reclaim our true selves. Done with hiding and weary of lying, we'll reconcile without and within. Then, like naked squint-eyed newborns, we'll greet the glorious birth of dawn;
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|
authenticity
being-real
burn
carpe-diem
inspiration
inspirational
masks
motivational
motivational-quotes
real
true-self
true-selves
|
John Mark Green |
a40ba8d
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Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real?
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|
disaster
real
|
Walker Percy |
629bcef
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"Have you ever been on a roller coaster, Togawa-kun?
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|
life
real
|
Inoue Takehiko |
d6565cc
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Not a beauty queen. Not one of those. You know the ones. She was real.
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|
real
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Markus Zusak |
1965caf
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I suppose the best way to tell the story is simply to narrate it, without an effort to carry belief. The thing did not require belief. It was not a feeling of horror in one's bones, or a misty outline, or anything that needed to be given actuality by an act of faith. It was as solid as a wardrobe. You don't have to believe in wardrobes. They are there, with corners. (The Troll)
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|
horror
real
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T.H. White |
bdcb869
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I stood there, watching her. The whole world was a dream, I realized. Everyone was acting in a bad soap opera. The whole world was one big FOX TV show.
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dream
fake
fox-tv
real
reality
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Blake Nelson |
1585446
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A couple of them were school beauty-queen pretty while a few were that more real-looking type. A realer kind of pretty.
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beauty-queens
pretty
real
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Markus Zusak |
235a3fd
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Your imaginary friend isn't the problem, Amanda. The problem is that you don't seem to have any real friends.
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death
fantasy
friendship
imaginary-friend
imagination
love
psychiatry
real
|
Rebecca McNutt |
5e52bf1
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"This was real life, not a book. And in
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fiction
legacy
life
real
someday
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Danielle Steele |
1c39b1d
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I don't feel like a person at all: I am something to be loaded and unloaded, like a sofa or a cuckoo clock. I am something to be tossed into a junkyard, thrown into the river, if necessary. I don't feel real anymore. I feel like I could disappear.
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|
dissapear
feelings
people
real
thrown-away
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Gillian Flynn |
7821b82
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DeLois lived up the block on 142nd Street and never had her hair done, and all the neighbourhood women sucked their teeth as she walked by. Her crispy hair twinkled in the summer sun as her big proud stomach moved her on down the block while I watched, not caring whether or not she was a poem.
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|
afro-hair
big
free
inspirational
judging
judgmental
natural
real
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Audre Lorde |
65b0769
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"Last night I thought about all that kerosene I've used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I'd never even thought that thought before." He got out of bed. "It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life and then I come along in two minutes and boom! it's all over." "Let me alone," said Mildred. "I didn't do anything." "Let you alone! That's all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were bothered? About something important, about something real?"
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|
books
bother
create
creation
creativity
destruction
ignorance
important
kerosene
life
lifetime
observation
real
reality
reality-check
thought
time
work
world
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Ray Bradbury |
2c24070
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The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself, to see and to respond to the real world in the light of a virtuous consciousness. This is the non-metaphysical meaning of the idea of transcendence to which philosophers have so constantly resorted in their explanations of goodness. 'Good is a transcendent reality' means that virtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is. It is an empirical fact about human nature that this attempt cannot be entirely successful.
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|
good
human-nature
illusion
real
transcendence
|
Iris Murdoch |
3bd2bdf
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But I feel more real when I'm around her. Like I'm not fading.
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|
friends
real
sadness
|
Scott Westerfeld |
a41bf52
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The black land slid by and he was going into the country among the hills. For the first time in a dozen years the stars were coming out above him, in great processions of wheeling fire. He saw a great juggernaut of stars form in the sky and threaten to roll over and crush him... the river was mild and leisurely, going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapors for supper. The river was very real; it held him comfortably and gave him the time at last, the leisure, to consider this month, this year, and a lifetime of years. He listened to his heart slow. His thoughts stopped rushing with his blood.
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|
peace
real
river
solitude
stars
|
Ray Bradbury |
2afceb4
|
We're going to be married and hardly touch each other and have to work and work and never have any fun and we're just going to be okay with it because that's how life is and that's how relationships go, but I don't want that. I want our marriage to be... fun. I love joking around while we fool around. I want to hold hands everywhere we go. I want to make out in the back of a movie theater, steal kisses in coffee shops, have sex over every inch of our apartment or house or wherever we live. And I'm scared marriage will change the fun part of our relationship. The part that keeps us young, keeps us in love, and I'm terrified you'll wake up when you're fifty and realize you're stuck with the decision you made when you were twenty-seven, and we haven't touched in months, we don't go out. I just want to know when that happens... that you'll still... you'll still love me.
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|
love
marriage
real
|
Cassie Mae |
b889533
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Only a real man has the right to stand at the pinnacle.
|
|
pinnacle
real
|
James Clavell |
e3407b6
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I'm the perfect girl. You read about me in Maxim or whatever. I tell dirty jokes like I'm one of the guys, and I'm sitting there in my panties and bra so you can see I'm a piece of ass in the bargain. Except I'm real, so I come with all kinds of complications.
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|
bargain
bra
complications
dirty-jokes
panties
perfect-girl
real
|
Garth Ennis |
0d24b51
|
"We are all ghosts," Morris Klapper said at last. "We are conceived in a moment of death and born out of ghost wombs, and we play in the streets with other little ghosts, chanting ghost-rhymes and scratching to become real. We are told that life is full of goals and that, although it is sadly necessary to fight, you can at least choose your war. But we learn that for ghosts there can only be one battle: to become real. A few of us make it, thus encouraging other ghosts to believe it can be done."
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ghosts
goals
morris-klapper
necessary-to-fight
real
to-become-real
war
|
Peter S. Beagle |