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f83c6e5
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I wish I knew how to quit you.
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Annie Proulx |
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87cffe5
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We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.
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hard-times
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Annie Proulx |
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0a38a63
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There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.
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Annie Proulx |
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b684467
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And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.
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Annie Proulx |
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03bb0f7
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Everybody that went away suffered a broken heart. "I'm coming back some day," they all wrote. But never did. The old life was too small to fit anymore."
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old-life
homesick
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Annie Proulx |
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622241b
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We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.
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Annie Proulx |
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9b4ed6c
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The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack's sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he'd thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack's own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one.
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Annie Proulx |
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f8adbcb
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You got no fuckin idea how bad it gets. I'm not you. I can't make it on a couple a high-altitude fucks once or twice a year. You're too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch. I wish I knew how to quit you.
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Annie Proulx |
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d4cc3da
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A spinning coin, still balanced on its rim, may fall in either direction.
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Annie Proulx |
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2a9514a
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Late in the afternoon, thunder growling, that same old green pickup rolled in and he saw Jack get out of the truck, beat up Resistol tilted back. A hot jolt scalded Ennis and he was out on the landing pulling the door closed behind him. Jack took the stairs two and two. They seized each other by the shoulders, hugged mightily, squeezing the breath out of each other, saying, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, then, and easily as the right key t..
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love
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Annie Proulx |
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8d55568
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It takes a year, nephew... a full turn of the calendar, to get over losing someone.
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grief
loss
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Annie Proulx |
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5a30787
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Anyway, there's something wrong with everybody and it's up to you to know what you can handle.
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E. Annie Proulx |
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66ac284
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The old forests are going and once they are gone we will have to wait a thousand years or more to see their like. Though nothing will be allowed such a generous measure of time to grow.
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Annie Proulx |
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6e3e790
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He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.
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Annie Proulx |
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9e23faa
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What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger. They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, its burning tossing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against the rock. The minutes ticked by from the round..
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Annie Proulx |
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2efb613
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and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.
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E. Annie Proulx |
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c30e755
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Was love then like a bag of assorted sweets passed around from which one might choose more than once? Some might sting the tongue, some invoke night perfume. Some had centers as bitter as gall, some blended honey and poison, some were quickly swallowed. And among the common bull's-eyes and peppermints a few rare ones; one or two with deadly needles at the heart, another that brought clam and gentle pleasure. Were his fingers closing on that..
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Annie Proulx |
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a014744
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Their silence comfortable. Something unfolding. But what? Not love, which wrenched and wounded. Not love, which came only once.
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Annie Proulx |
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ab61206
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You stand there, braced. Cloud shadows race over the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country--indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky--provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but i..
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Annie Proulx |
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7fb113e
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For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat's blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, and that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain..
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Annie Proulx |
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fb974ae
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One of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.
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Annie Proulx |
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ff75336
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All the travelin I ever done is going around the coffeepot looking for the handle.
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Annie Proulx |
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f3773f8
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You know, friend, this is a goddamn bitch of a unsatisfactory situation.
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Annie Proulx |
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96feb78
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What we fear we often rage against.
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Annie Proulx |
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b01f196
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It's easier to die if others around you are dying.
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Annie Proulx |
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c576fdb
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and they shook hands, hit each other on the shoulder, then there was forty feet of distance between them and nothing to do but drive away in opposite directions. Within a mile Ennis felt like someone was pulling his guts out hand over hand a yard at a time. He stopped at the side of the road and, in the whirling new snow, tried to puke but nothing came up. He felt about as bad as he ever had and it took a long time for the feeling to wear o..
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Annie Proulx |
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e0ed94b
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A kind of joyous hysteria moved into the room, everything flying before the wind, vehicles outside getting dented to hell, the crowd sweaty and the smells of aftershave, manure, clothes dried on the line, your money's worth of perfume, smoke, booze; the music subdued by the shout and babble through the bass hammer could be felt through the soles of the feet, shooting up the channels of legs to the body fork, center of everything. It is the ..
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dance
saturday
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Annie Proulx |
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a360a93
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The room stank of semen and smoke and sweat and whiskey, of old carpet and sour hay, saddle leather, shit and cheap soap.
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Annie Proulx |
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55fb700
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All must pay the debt of nature.
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nature
environmentalism
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Annie Proulx |
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9400eb3
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In every life there are events that reshape one's sense of existence. Afterward, all is different and the past is dimmed.
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meaning-of-life
nihilism
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Annie Proulx |
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274bd13
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If life was an arc of light that began in darkness, ended in darkness, the first part of his life had happened in ordinary glare. Here it was as though he had found a polarized lens that deepened and intensified all seen through it.
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Annie Proulx |
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c62ff10
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all them things I don't know could get you killed if I come to know them
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Annie Proulx |
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e6d0833
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And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and release; the pillow sometimes wet, sometimes the sheets.
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Annie Proulx |
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94d3ea7
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Walking on the land or digging in the fine soil I am intensely aware that time quivers slightly, changes occurring in imperceptible and minute ways, accumulating so subtly that they seem not to exist. Yet the tiny shifts in everything--cell replication, the rain of dust motes, lengthening hair, wind-pushed rocks--press inexorably on and on.
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time-passing
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E. Annie Proulx |
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b2b5333
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As it did go. They never talked about the sex, let it happen, at first only in the tent at night, then in the full daylight with the hot sun striking down, and at evening in the fire glow, quick, rough, laughing and snorting, no lack of noises, but saying not a goddamn word except once Ennis said, "I'm not no queer," and Jack jumped in with "Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody's business but ours."
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Annie Proulx |
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6759368
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By January it had always been winter.
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Annie Proulx |
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5a3700e
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The windows of his house shone in the darkness like squares of melting butter.
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Annie Proulx |
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53cd87f
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There was a month of fiery happiness. Then six kinked years of suffering.
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Annie Proulx |
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0b96283
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You've got a chance to start out all over again. A new place, new people, new sights. A clean slate. See, you can be anything you want with a fresh start.
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people
fresh-start
place
new
start
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Annie Proulx |
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284906b
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Again the ranch is on the market and they've shipped out the last of the horses, paid everybody off the day before, the owner saying, 'Give them to the real estate shark, I'm out a here," dropping the keys in Ennis's hand. He might have to stay with his married daughter until he picks up another job, yet he is suffused with a sense of pleasure because Jack Twist was in his dream."
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death
love
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Annie Proulx |
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bfc16ed
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There's a feeling you get driving down to Casper at night from the north, and not only there, other places where you come through hours of darkness unrelieved by any lights except the crawling wink of some faraway ranch truck. You come down a grade and all at once the shining town lies below you, slung out like all western towns, and with the curved bulk of mountain behind it. The lights trail away to the east in a brief and stubby cluster ..
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Annie Proulx |
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e374917
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Where are the reporters of yesteryear?' he muttered, 'the nail biting, acerbic, alcoholic nighthawk bastards who truly knew how to write?
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Annie Proulx |
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69587a6
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Home after midnight from a debate on the wording of a minor municipal bylaw on bottle recycling, he felt like he was a pin in the hinge of power.
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E. Annie Proulx |
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5a682c0
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He had wanted to be a sophomore.
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Annie Proulx |