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40dc2fd
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All four of the boys were frozen, mesmerized, the weirdest chill washing over their skin while they watched this miraculous growing animal devouring the earth in every direction, every direction where there was grass and not bothering them at all on the pavement. The fire came as high as their waists, their chests, gorgeous beyond anything they'd seen, the rippling orange sheets hanging in the air like a desert mirage, like something that w..
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Ann Patchett |
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08781a4
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What you have to remember about your mother is that she didn't have her own character. She turned into whoever she was sitting next to. When
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Ann Patchett |
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59209bb
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Until then I'll keep writing things down, both the things I make up and the things that have happened. It is the way I've learned to see my life.
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Ann Patchett |
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f34b701
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No, you don't look at the cigarette, you look at me. When you light a cigarette you have to look the person in the eyes.
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Ann Patchett |
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bfd243f
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I have always believed that the desire for revenge is one of life's great motivators, and my success would be my revenge
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Ann Patchett |
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3940669
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I saw it myself. An endless succession of mongrels and malingerers, the laziest dropouts who fancied themselves explorers. He made his policy clear: he was not responsible for their food, their shelter, their safety, or their health. He didn't waste his time discouraging them because frankly there was no discouragement they could not withstand. All of the energy they could have put into their intelligence they had used to develop their tena..
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scathing
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Ann Patchett |
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e34a957
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She was loyal and brave and as smart as a treeful of owls. By explaining her talents and legions of virtues, though, I would not be making my point, which is that the death of my dog hit me harder than the deaths of many people I have known, and this can't be explained away by saying how good she was. She was. But what I was feeling was something else entirely. I came to realize in the months following Rose's death, months that I referred t..
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Ann Patchett |
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fb5b6a1
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The root system changes the acidity level in the soil so that nothing much will grow here except for the trees and a little bit of grass. In a sense you could say the tree poisons the area it inhabits to make sure that nothing else will survive in its space and take the nutrients out of the soil or grow taller and block out the sunlight.
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Ann Patchett |
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d09de2a
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He liked to talk about the criminals he had put away, and how a person never knew, and how he had to protect his family, and how he wasn't going to let the other guy make the first move, but really it was just that Bert liked guns. The
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Ann Patchett |
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de7a2e4
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She had made a terrible error in judgement and he had turned it into something permanent and beautiful. That was the nail in the tire. Or not even that. Not her reading it, not his writing it, but
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Ann Patchett |
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8efdca8
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Clearly he needed a father, but some other father, any other father, would have been preferable.
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Ann Patchett |
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5faf61c
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Oh, my love,' she said. 'What do the only children do?' 'We'll never have to know.
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sisterhood
sisters
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Ann Patchett |
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e4c8bf6
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The dinner was a huge production, with kids stashed in the den to eat off card tables like a collection of understudies who dreamed of one day breaking into the dining room.
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family-dinner
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Ann Patchett |
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fd9f243
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There was no explanation for how the school, which was the major source of misery in their lives, could have been transformed into the most compelling place on earth simply by virtue of its being Saturday. What a difference a day makes, Albie's
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Ann Patchett |
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d2a5a27
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Life, Teresa knew by now, was a series of losses. It was other things too, better things, but the losses were as solid and dependable as the earth itself. Now
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Ann Patchett |
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081b8c2
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I was stopped by security guards in four buildings today. I showed my ID, was told I could go up, and then I was stopped by a second guard at the elevator who told me I couldn't go up." Fode nodded with appreciation. "This is most impressive for a white man."
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Ann Patchett |
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2a63006
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They didn't account for Lucy, only for her face. And maybe they couldn't. She was too huge for casual consideration. But how can you operate on the face without understanding what the face means to the girl? How can the meaning of kissing, swallowing, speaking, be completely ignored in favor of mechanics?
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Ann Patchett |
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6351736
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the story of his day. "Americans love the idea of vaccinating Africans. What could be nicer than a photograph of dusty little Nigerian children lined up for inoculation on the front page of the New York Times? But for their own children the mothers of New York City find vaccinations passe. They say the vaccination is not sufficiently natural, that it could possibly cause something worse than it could prevent. I have spent the day trying to ..
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Ann Patchett |
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ff546ab
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But sooner or later you have to do something. If you think you're going to find one thing that will be perfect for you, you're going to spend your eightieth birthday reading the want ads.
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Ann Patchett |
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621183f
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he had found her life meaningful when she could make no sense of it at all.
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Ann Patchett |
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09f7d42
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as far as I'm concerned, writer's block is a myth.
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Ann Patchett |
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cea1402
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So was the movie excruciating to watch because nothing was right, or was it excruciating to watch because, impossibly, some things were? Every
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Ann Patchett |
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e2bd5e0
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The two sisters were connected by neither love nor mutual affinity but by a very small bathroom that could be entered from the bedroom on either side.
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sisters
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Ann Patchett |
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a48e787
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The women in the kitchen took turns making a fuss over the baby, acting like it was their job to keep her entertained until the Magi arrived. But the baby wasn't entertained. Her blue eyes were glazed over. She was staring into the middle distance, tired of everything. All this rush to make sandwiches and take in presents for a girl who was not year a year old.
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christening
humor
party
women
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Ann Patchett |
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647b747
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Their relationship, which had been going on five years, was built on admiration and mutual disbelief. After
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Ann Patchett |
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a0bcec4
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She was not one to set her teeth so far into something that she couldn't let go when presented with the truth.
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Ann Patchett |
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e1f890e
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a woman raised her hand and said that her minister had told the congregation that they should never read novels with omniscient narrators, because the writer was trying to imitate God. "Really?" I said. "No Tolstoy? No Dickens?" The woman shook her head. I have to say it thrilled me to think that narrative structure was dangerous enough to rate its own Sunday sermon.) " --
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Ann Patchett |
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9fc0bfd
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It was soaring, that voice, warm and complicated, utterly fearless.
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Ann Patchett |
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d64e0d0
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We are, however, entirely responsible for procrastination, and in the best of all possible worlds, we should also be responsible for being honest with ourselves about what is really going on. I
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Ann Patchett |
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78023e7
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Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.
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Ann Patchett |
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52c3bec
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I remember complaining one night on the phone to my mother that we spent too much of our time worrying about love and money. "Think of it as research," she said. "That's what everybody writes about."
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Ann Patchett |
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06006f8
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She isn't my mother." He meant, of course, by simple mathematical extension, that his mother wasn't Teddy's mother either. Which meant that Bernadette, for whom he had lit a thousand candles, was the mother to whom his enormous love and devotion had no claim."
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Ann Patchett |
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6873c8d
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She told the woman to go to one of the online agent sites that list agents who are looking for new clients, and then follow their submission guidelines to the letter. If they ask for a twenty-page writing sample, do not send in twenty-two pages.
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Ann Patchett |
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dfc0721
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Time applied equaled work completed. I
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Ann Patchett |
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c7265a7
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I believe that, more than anything else, this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness,
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Ann Patchett |
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4fe0071
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Maybe he was concerned, or bored, or inappropriately friendly, or midwestern friendly.
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Ann Patchett |
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a9c5ff3
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The sick were a ferocious lot. They'd walk right through you if they thought that health was on the other side.
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Ann Patchett |
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f3cdfa8
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An essential element of being a writer is learning whom to listen to and whom to ignore where your work is concerned. Every
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Ann Patchett |
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56a9ba4
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Had I given equal weight to everyone who had something to say, every story would have turned into a terrible game of Twister (left
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Ann Patchett |
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5b710b8
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But part of what I love about both novels and dogs is that they are so beautifully oblivious to economic concerns. We serve them, and in return they thrive.
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Ann Patchett |
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e7f5b0b
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You can learn more, and more quickly, from other people's missteps than from their successes. If
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Ann Patchett |
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2d8937b
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The early years he had spent building Nansei were like a hurricane in his memory, a huge, overbearing wind into which every loose thing was sucked.
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Ann Patchett |
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a6721b9
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if I wanted to be a better writer, I was the only person who could push myself to do it. It was up to me to challenge myself, to be vigilant about finding the places in my own work where I was just getting by. "You have to ask yourself," he said to me, "if you want to write great literature or great television."
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Ann Patchett |
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8cc48a1
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Art stands on the shoulders of craft,
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Ann Patchett |