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9e8a535
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Face it,' I said. 'There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got,' I said.
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life-lesson
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Anne Tyler |
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1bf7e81
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The disappointments seemed to escape the family's notice, though. That was another of their quirks: they had a talent for pretending that everything was fine. Or maybe it wasn't a quirk at all. Maybe it was just further proof that the Whitshanks were not remarkable in any way whatsoever.
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Anne Tyler |
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e574e8f
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My cousin Roger once told me, on the eve of his third wedding, that he felt marriage was addictive. Then he corrected himself. I mean early marriage, he said. The very start of a marriage. It's like a whole new beginning. You're entirely brand-new people; you haven't made any mistakes yet. You have a new place to live and new dishes and this new kind of, like, identity, this 'we' that gets invited everywhere together now. Why, sometimes you..
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new-beginning
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Anne Tyler |
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33de5d8
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Funny how you have to picture losing a thing before you think you might value it after all.
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Anne Tyler |
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fdb3a67
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Let's say you had to report back to heaven at the end of your time on earth, tell them what your personal allotment of experience had been: wouldn't it sound like Poppy's speech? The smell of radiator dust on a winter morning, the taste of hot maple syrup ...
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Anne Tyler |
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6a09946
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He wanted to say, Muriel, forgive me, but since my son died, sex has... turned. (As milk turns; that was how he thought of it. As milk will alter its basic nature and turn sour.) I really don't think of it anymore. I honestly don't. I can't imagine anymore what all that fuss was about. Now it seems pathetic.
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Anne Tyler |
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e1272c8
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Why wasn't there an etiquette book for runaway wives?
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wife
separation
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Anne Tyler |
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8e093c4
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One thing that parents of problem children never said aloud: it was a relief when the children turned out okay, but then what were the parents supposed to do with the anger they'd felt all those years?
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Anne Tyler |
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f27203c
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But his study was so dim and close, and it gave off the salty inky smell of mental fidgeting.
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Anne Tyler |
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52c8bbe
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It was funny, in her old age, to look back and see for how short a period her nest had NOT been empty. Relatively speaking, it was nothing - empty far longer than full. so much of herself had been invested in those children; who could believe how briefly they'd been with her.
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Anne Tyler |
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0b3c59f
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She loved them so much that she felt a kind of hollowness on the inner surface of her arms whenever she looked at them- an ache of longing to pull them close and hold them tight against her.
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grandchildren
grandparents
grandmother
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Anne Tyler |
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13dda60
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Sugar's cheek was smooth and taut beneath the veil. It felt like one of these netted onions in a grocery store.
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Anne Tyler |
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0657f3b
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He had begun to have spells lately of worrying that he had died, and that everyone knew it but him.
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Anne Tyler |
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612b3af
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They entered Pennsylvania and the road grew smooth for a few hundred yards, like a good intention, before settling back to the old scabby, stippled surface.
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Anne Tyler |
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14762e1
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Oh, the terrible, crushing, breath-stealing burden of people who think they own you!
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Anne Tyler |
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1c7366a
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This was an attractive room, spacious and well designed, but it had the comfortably shabby air of a place whose inhabitants had long ago stopped seeing it.
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Anne Tyler |
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1d58a82
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Always have a purpose,' his father used to tell him. 'Act like you're heading someplace purposeful, and none of the low-life will mess with you.' He had also said, 'Never trust a man who starts his sentences with "Frankly,"' and 'Nine tenths of a good sidearm pitch is in the flick of the wrist,' and 'If you want to sell a person something, look off elsewhere as you're speaking, not straight into his eyes."
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Anne Tyler |
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074bbaf
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when I get up in the morning I think, boy, only fourteen more hours and I can be back to sleep again. I
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Anne Tyler |
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8641ffc
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Ghosts... they are the completions of the deads intended gestures, there unfinished plans still hanging in the air - something like when you forgot one thing and so you pantomime the motion.
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inspirational-attitude
life
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Anne Tyler |
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c02fef7
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I liked to dwell on these shortcomings now. It wasn't only that I was wondering why they had ever annoyed me. I was hoping they would annoy me still, so that I could stop missing her.
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Anne Tyler |
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46e6528
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those who forget the past tend to regret the future
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Anne Tyler |
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e6583e4
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that was Julian for you: reckless. A dashing sailor, a speedy driver, a frequenter of single bars, he was the kind of man who would make a purchase without consulting _Consumer Reports_.
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Anne Tyler |
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c646b85
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She said, 'Red, I want to learn every step of you, and dance till the end of the night.
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Anne Tyler |