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d62902a
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He realized then what he had known from the first minute he saw her, from when she leaned out the kitchen door and called for her husband. This was the start of his life.
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Ann Patchett |
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f83d8af
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Why, she wanted to ask them, with all the empty stools to choose from, would they want to sit so close? She
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Ann Patchett |
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9647234
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The words "Ask Your Doctor" parked across the top of the screen, as if the advertisers had anticipated everyone turning off the sound. Franny wondered if the drug was for depression, an overactive bladder, thinning hair."
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Ann Patchett |
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19cbbbb
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There was no embarrassment there, only peace, only enough time left to ask for one more favor, which Franny thought was the deepest difference between women and men. His
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Ann Patchett |
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857e4a8
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the woman you love is not in Tokyo or Paris or New York or Athens. The woman you love is a girl who dresses as a boy and she lives in a village in a jungle, the name of which you are not allowed to know, not
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Ann Patchett |
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8b4ac22
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Here you
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Ann Patchett |
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df8ed1f
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You're hardly even in the book." Caroline laughed. "Maybe that's what irritated me about it. Anyway, if I was going to sue I'd make it a class-action case, get the whole family involved."
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Ann Patchett |
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b93a52a
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stopped by this. Even she, who knew next to nothing
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Ann Patchett |
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fbc3d8c
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Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words. This
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Ann Patchett |
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bcf8f4f
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to never have to look at someone who was remembering when you have made such a concerted effort to forget.
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Ann Patchett |
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7ade54d
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father.
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Ann Patchett |
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50dc02a
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imagine that every now and then a book is picked up by a prestigious New York agent and sold to a prestigious New York publisher, but it is statistically akin to finding a four-leaf clover. On the banks of the Dead Sea. In July.
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Ann Patchett |
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96f5752
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had I listened to no one, or only to the people who liked me, the workshop would have been a waste of time.
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Ann Patchett |
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9c9a7ac
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Messner sighed and handed him the phone. "One minute." "I swear it," Simon said. He was already dialing the number. The phone rang five times and then the answering machine picked up the line. It was his own voice, saying first in Spanish and then again in French that they were out, saying they would return the call. Why hadn't Edith recorded the message? What had he been thinking of? He put his hand over his eyes and began to cry. The soun..
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Ann Patchett |
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4143e1b
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What I like about the job of being a novelist, and at the same time what I find so exhausting about it, is that it's the closest thing to being God you're ever going to get. All of the decisions are yours. You decide when the sun comes up. You decide who gets to fall in love and who gets hit by a car. You have to make all the trees and all the leaves and then sew the leaves onto the trees. You make the entire world. As much as I might wish ..
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Ann Patchett |
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cdf678c
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He'd told her she wouldn't have to do anything but lie on the big down sofa in the front room and read all day, or she could ride her bike to the beach and read.
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Ann Patchett |
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c846459
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People simultaneously wanted to kill them, believed that they had almost killed them, and were afraid of being killed by them.
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Ann Patchett |
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54ad1a5
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So I've come to Chicago to have a drink," he said. "I'm living in Iowa City for now. Have you ever been to Iowa City?" "I"
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Ann Patchett |
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132a6f8
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Transcendentalist movement?
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Ann Patchett |
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5859875
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He did not understand how such a short time in this house could have returned him to adolescence.
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Ann Patchett |
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93c2da4
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let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
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Ann Patchett |
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b759f87
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we are tired--tired of being segregated and humiliated; tired of being kicked about by the brutal feet of oppression. There comes a time my friends when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, when they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glimmering sunlight of last July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an Alpine November.
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Ann Patchett |
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435d36f
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His heart woke him up to remind him that in life there was never a limitless number of nights. The
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Ann Patchett |
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517de6b
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You have to remember that they could go at any time, and if a man's smart he never forgets that.
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Ann Patchett |
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b075524
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Neither Doyle nor Sullivan had ever been to visit him at Regina Cleri, and Tip had only come one time and then left after five minutes. To Father Sullivan it was as if this part of his family, these people whom he loved, had all packed up and gone to Africa.
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Ann Patchett |
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3ef1a19
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I had to wait until the thought of not telling you was worse than the thought of telling you. Does
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Ann Patchett |
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89d957c
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Duty--honor--country,'" he said in the voice of an old white man who'd been battered by war. "'Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be."
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Ann Patchett |
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7351f19
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He wondered if this was what people were doing--were they making dinners with their family, holding babies, recounting days? Was this what life was like for them? Albie's
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Ann Patchett |
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a39f94c
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I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free...'" Night"
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Ann Patchett |
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5a598eb
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To be truly brave, I believe a person has to be more than a little stupid.
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Ann Patchett |
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882c349
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Making friends with other writers you respect is reason enough to go to graduate school. You
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Ann Patchett |
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f66f15b
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No one should go into debt to study creative writing. It
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Ann Patchett |
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6424d90
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it wasn't the girls you saw at all, only a gathering of distended abdomens, overinflated balloons from which small wisps of girls were attached.
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Ann Patchett |
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0e54254
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I decided I was going to make up a novel, and that the novel was going to get me out of the restaurant. The novel was going to be my getaway car.
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Ann Patchett |
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d91e907
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Eternal rest, grant unto her, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon her. May her soul and all the souls of the faithfully departed rest in peace. Amen.
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Ann Patchett |
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fdf7de6
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novel excerpts rarely benefit from group critique. It's one thing to get all those opinions when you've finished, but when you're still in the middle of a project, it's like having fifteen people give you conflicting directions as to how best to get to the interstate.) And
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Ann Patchett |
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8869a71
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He began the patter, the Ladies-and-gentlemen-I-want-to-welcome-you-to. Dot and Bertie Fetters sat forward in their seats, so thrilled to be entertained that for the moment they forgot that the purpose of their trip was to mourn. But then that was the point of magic, to take people in, make them forget what was real and possible. They were so utterly game that when Sam Spender asked if there was anyone in the audience from out of town, they..
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Ann Patchett |
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14c7d7f
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Everybody likes Anders. But if Vogel
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Ann Patchett |
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82ad7be
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If I were taking notes, they would read: I see something. A shape? I have no idea. It's not exactly the stuff that literary archives are made of.
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Ann Patchett |
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721c03b
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Fix's and Bert's mutual theory that a consistent practice over so many years would result in a perfect score had not been correct. A perfect score on the LSAT is 180. Caroline Keating came in at 177. She didn't know where she had lost those three points but she never forgave herself for them.
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Ann Patchett |
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e65407d
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She could read the patterns, knew at a glance a Melas from a Konya, a Ladik from a Sivas. She loved the Ladik.
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Ann Patchett |
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30ad41d
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my mother knew that no woman thought she was beautiful, or beautiful enough, or beautiful in the right way.
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Ann Patchett |
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1ce6e31
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They look into the mirror and all they can see is a collection of flaws,
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Ann Patchett |
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bd0d311
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There will always be people there to tell a pretty girl what she should be doing or thinking. At the counter, it's the pretty girls you can always sell the most to. They never know their minds." "You"
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Ann Patchett |