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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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human
derivative
secondhand-experience
seen-it-all
real
personality-traits
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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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youth
truth
ideals
real
nostalgia
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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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reality
real
movies
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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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lover
lovers
silence
life
love
real-life
awkward
flirt
gorgeous
looking-at-me
natalie-portman
turn-me-on
vendetta
john-green
boy
the-fault-in-our-stars
real
girl
smile
smiling
beautiful
hazel
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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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relationships
imaginary
real
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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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man
real
father
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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
philosophy
imaginary
symbolic
real
ideology
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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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real
perfect
person
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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
strength-of-a-woman
stupidity
inspirational-life
inspirational-quotes
strength
wisdom
inspirational
parable
stupidity-of-man
gentle
parables
genuine
silk
soft
real
wisdom-quotes
fake
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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
truth
real
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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
real
popularity
|
John Green |
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
surreal
remembering
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Haruki Murakami |
2067336
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Damn real live people, getting in the way of peaceful ideals.
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live
people
peaceful
ideals
real
way
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John Scalzi |
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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time
revenge
free
thoughts
future
fin
alive
finished
wasting-time
goodbyes
real
complete
done
waiting
wasted
everything
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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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|
real
dreaming
mystery
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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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sleep
dracula
real
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 |
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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
two-dimensions
real
|
John Green |
98cdf3e
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"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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inspiration
motivational
inspirational
motivational-quotes
being-real
true-selves
true-self
carpe-diem
real
burn
authenticity
masks
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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
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Walker Percy |
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"Have you ever been on a roller coaster, Togawa-kun?
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life
real
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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 |
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
reality
fox-tv
real
fake
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Blake Nelson |
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
imagination
fantasy
friendship
love
imaginary-friend
real
psychiatry
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Rebecca McNutt |
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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feelings
people
dissapear
thrown-away
real
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Gillian Flynn |
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
real
pretty
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Markus Zusak |
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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free
inspirational
big
judgmental
judging
real
afro-hair
natural
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Audre Lorde |
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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|
real
horror
|
T.H. White |
5e52bf1
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"This was real life, not a book. And in
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fiction
life
someday
real
legacy
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Danielle Steele |
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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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time
world
books
reality
work
life
bother
kerosene
lifetime
reality-check
observation
real
important
create
ignorance
destruction
thought
creativity
creation
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Ray Bradbury |
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
sadness
real
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Scott Westerfeld |
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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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solitude
stars
river
real
peace
|
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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|
illusion
good
real
transcendence
human-nature
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Iris Murdoch |
2afceb4
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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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|
marriage
love
real
|
Cassie Mae |
0d24b51
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"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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war
morris-klapper
necessary-to-fight
to-become-real
real
goals
ghosts
|
Peter S. Beagle |
b889533
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Only a real man has the right to stand at the pinnacle.
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|
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
perfect-girl
panties
real
|
Garth Ennis |