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be9043d
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But how can I be disappointed in space?
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Beth Revis |
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b25e665
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Our masterpieces are Shakespeare and Jane Austen and griots and Murasaki Shikibu, but they're also J.K. Rowling and Chuck Palahnuik and Douglas Adams and Amy Tan and Suzanne Collins and Chinua Achebe. Read. Read them all. Read the books you love, and try to read books you don't. Read the genres you love, but sometimes also read a book outside your comfort zone. Read voraciously.
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Beth Revis |
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4ad4428
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More than the sound of my own beating heart, I miss the sound of a ticking clock. Time passes, it must pass, but I have no more assurance of moving through time than I have that I am moving through space. In a way, I'm glad: this means perhaps 300 years and 364 days have passed, and tomorrow I will wake up. Sometimes after a cross-country meet or a long day at school, I'd fall into bed with all my clothes on and be out before I knew it. Whe..
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time
dream
fear
beating-heart
clock
amy-martin
clocks
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Beth Revis |
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fb68d84
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Everyone, this is the new girl. Elder knows her. New girl, this is everyone." A few people look up politely; some actually smile. Most, however, look wary at best, disgusted at worse. The nurse closest to me jabs her finger behind her ear and starts whispering to nobody. "What's wrong with her?" I ask Harley as he leads me to the table he was sitting at. "Oh, don't worry, we're all mad here." I giggle, mostly from nerves. "It's a good thing..
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mad
alice-in-wonderland
down-the-rabbit-hole
harley
introducing
we-are-all-mad-here
amy-martin
cheshire
nerves
stranger
different
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Beth Revis |
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51abe09
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All of them?" I ask. I could almost understand her need to awaken her parents, but we don't need to add nearly a hundred frozen people to the cacophony of voices around us."
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Beth Revis |
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96bb38e
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We're so close we could touch. All it would take is for me to reach out my hand. But neither of us makes a move.
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Beth Revis |
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618a9ee
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Kayleigh was right. Without the pills, you really do feel nothing. And nothing can be nice.
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as-they-slip-away
kayleigh
selene
atu-series
pills
feeling
nothing
nothingness
numb
forgetting
right
drugs
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Beth Revis |
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9156d9d
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The freedom of our people is more important!" Julie says fiercely. "We will never stop fighting, never stop working for what is right!" Jack just smiles at her. "That's a nice lie to believe," he says."
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lies
freedom
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Beth Revis |
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0b31b08
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Ella!" the voice yells, but I cannot tell where it is coming from. The sound wraps around me, spreading like spilt water and then evaporating into silence. "Where am I?" I whisper again. The darkness stretches out for eternity. I take a few steps forward, but the feeling is surreal--I cannot tell if I've actually moved or not, because everything is nothing. I feel something wet and warm slide down my cheek, and I touch the tear with my fing..
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dream
death
darkness
reverie
stuck
trapped
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Beth Revis |
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e654e78
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What you really want to know," I say, "is how to make sure we all don't just rip each other apart, right?" The fight earlier is way too fresh in our minds. We are a powder keg; just a spark will blow us apart."
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blow
bob-martin
amy-martin
atu-series
shades-of-earth
apart
fight
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Beth Revis |
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4fcf89e
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All the computers in the world are on a network. They're linked by our cuffs. But I'm a computer. Jack's a computer--Akilah--PA Young--all the cy-clones. We're all computers. You know the great thing about computers? They can be hacked.
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computers
hacking
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Beth Revis |
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3e55a62
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And this is what she wants to do to people. Let them have their own lives, until she wants them. Give them the strength of giants, but not the power to control it.
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manipulation
power
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Beth Revis |
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ea8c73d
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As soon as I say the words, I know they were the right ones. My eyes dip down to Dad's memorial plaque. Truth doesn't lie in the heart of fortune... it's under Triumph Towers, where the labs are.
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words
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Beth Revis |
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c7c84a8
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And I try to remember if this happened before, because this is a memory I would want to keep. But there is no echo of it in my mind.
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oblivion
remember
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Beth Revis |
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40294d6
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I try not to look obvious as I wait for Mom's answer. I feel as if I am on the edge of a knife, my feet being sliced by the blade, teetering toward one side or the other. "Oh, of course!" Mom exclaims, her voice trilling with laughter. "How could I have forgotten?" And now I know. Really know. This woman is not my mother. I don't know who she is, but I know absolutely who she is not."
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lies
ella-shepard
fake
scared
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Beth Revis |
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8374bf5
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I have emotions," I whisper. I am nothing but a black hole of emotions."
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Beth Revis |
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defac1c
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Family is never really gone.
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Beth Revis |
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7dcc401
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I half believe him, but I can't risk being wrong based on a gut feeling. [...] "What do you want me to do?" Jack throws up his hands. "If I could crack open my skull and let you read my brain like a book, I would!" My breath catches in my throat. Because I... I could read his brain like a book."
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reading-mind
reverie-mental-spa
reverie
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Beth Revis |
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f483ea3
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I wish you were here," I say, shutting my eyes and remembering the way Dad looked in my hallucination. I hear his voice again, so real that I'm worried I'm about to fall into another hallucination. Maybe that's what I really want. If I can only see him in madness, is it worth trying to hold onto sanity?"
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sanity
hallucination
insanity
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Beth Revis |
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8714c67
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It's not selfish to be yourself and pursue your dreams.
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Beth Revis |
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526d6a3
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Everyone has wounds; everyone pretends they don't.
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Beth Revis |
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405ad83
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The silence in our house now is born from the need for intense concentration, as we all carefully step around the truth we wish we didn't know, the person we can't help that Bo became, the future we're all afraid is collapsing around us, falling as silent and cold and crushing as snow.
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Beth Revis |
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4870169
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FAILURE IS INEVITABLE. I will fail. We all will. And having failed, and gotten back up, and failed again, taught me that I can survive failure. This is a downfall in most modern stories: the hero always wins. Because while this story is inspiring, it's also false. In reality, not everyone wins. It's 100% true that no one wills all the time, and we expect that--every hero must fall at least once. But it's also 100% true that some people neve..
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Beth Revis |
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7d06026
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Failure makes the success worth it.
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Beth Revis |
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b756fb6
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The three hardest parts of writing a novel are writing the beginning, the middle, and the end.
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Beth Revis |
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353364c
|
I feel the darkness inside me like a creature curled up in my chest, breathing smoke and fire. It is always there. It weighs on me. It's not contained by anything but my own skin. Sometimes it sleeps. Sometimes it doesn't.
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Beth Revis |
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b5d300f
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You always think that drowning is loud. In the movies, if someone drowns they scream, they churn water. Everyone notices a drowning person in movies." Sofia looked down, and I though she was crying, but when she looked up at me again, I realized her eyes were dry. "Real drowning is quiet. It doesn't announce itself. It just... it just happens. And then you're gone." I didn't understand what she was saying before, but now I think I do. We're..
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Beth Revis |
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bf27a13
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The simple truth is that power isn't control at all - power is strength, and giving that strength to others.
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Beth Revis |
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50e556a
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Que pasaria si estuviese en la Tierra y no en esta dichosa nave? Si hubiese conocido a Elder en el instituto, en un bar o en una cita a ciegas; si hubiese podido elegir entre Elder y cualquier otro chico del mundo... ?lo querria? ?Me querria el a mi? El amor sin posibilidad de eleccion no es amor.
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Beth Revis |
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4d377f7
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I lean closer to him, so close I can smell his skin, and when I speak, I can see how the little hairs near his ear move with my breath. "I also want you to know that I won't kill you right away. But that you'll wish I had."
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Beth Revis |
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e43ad82
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I can see, for just a moment, his beating heart in his ribcage, and then that, too, withers and dies, the useless, blackened lump tapping against his ribs before plopping out of his body.
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Beth Revis |
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5c9e8d9
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It wasn't that he called me a freak. It was the way he said it. Like he really meant it. Like he believed it.
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Beth Revis |
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5009070
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Because I can think of no better way to meet a girl than to see her through the eyes of the story she loves best.
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Beth Revis |
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d3f5a64
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She stares back into me, as if we are both seeking a humanity that neither of us has.
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Beth Revis |
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1863f33
|
We keep sending colonies up into space," Akilah says, "and we don't even know what's at the bottom of the sea." "Yeah, we do," I counter. "Fish and stuff." Akilah laughs. "We've barely explored the sea. There are places where the water is so deep that it has never seen light." She sighs. "I would like to go to those places. I would like to sink down and down and down and see what's hidden at the bottom." The sea is a dangerous place because..
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earth
death
life
below-the-sea
ella-shepard
ground
waves
sea
dangerous
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Beth Revis |
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42668c4
|
I am surrounded by death, inside and out, and all it does is remind me of how futile everything is, everything ever was.
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Beth Revis |
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c0d7da3
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There's a war going on, that much is clear. And I'm no longer sure I'm on the right side.
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Beth Revis |
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71ee5d1
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If you love someone - deeply, in as true a way as you can - you will get hurt. People leave us and love falls apart, and when it does, it hurts. It should hurt. How can you not hurt when what you love is gone?
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Beth Revis |
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bf11ccc
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But, really, grief left a hole in you, and while you healed around the hole, you never didn't have it. A piece of you was gone. You couldn't heal something that wasn't there.
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Beth Revis |
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3323c78
|
You are not one person. You are a different person in each moment in time. Your name means nothing. Go see a person with the same name in a different time, and it's someone else entirely.
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time-travel
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Beth Revis |
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b0b30d4
|
Perhaps the only thing worse than fear is apathy. Fear makes us do horrible things to people. Apathy makes us allow horrible things to happen to them.
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Beth Revis |
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72f0e5f
|
Across the Universe takes place entirely on a generation spaceship, and, aside from a brief introduction, is not on Earth at all. But obviously, something had to have been happening on Earth. Something that would stem from the world that made the Financial Resource Exchange (FRX) and phydus.
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books
atu-series
the-body-electric
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Beth Revis |
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d2f9d02
|
Yo solo puedo pensar en las estrellas. Es como si hubiese perdido un pedazo de alma y ese vacio se hubiera llenado con la luz de un millon de estrellas. Son todo lo que he sonado jamas; son lo que nunca hubiera esperado.
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Beth Revis |
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3a48278
|
We wanted to protect some planets that the Empire wanted to destroy. Not outright, not even the Empire's that evil.
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Beth Revis |