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e8c974a
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My role was to pulse at the edge of the universe of the faithful, alone in the darkness. An outrider. A herald.
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David Mitchell |
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7e806d1
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The world has long forgotten, but we mountain-dwellers live in the prayer wheel of time.
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David Mitchell |
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3fed479
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How Opulent the building had felt after my own parents' bland box of suburbia - one day, I promise, I'm going to live in a house like this. Another promise I've broken; at least that one was only to myself.
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David Mitchell |
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8430377
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Vnizu Buntaro zhuet <> i smotrit fil'm, polnyi kiborgov, mototsiklov i svarshchikov. Kivaiu na ekran: -- Chto smotrish'? -- Proveriaiu dva zakona kinematografa. -- Kakie? -- Pervyi zakon glasit: <>, nichego ne stoit>>. -- A vtoroi? -- <>.
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David Mitchell |
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ae990ff
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Kniga, kotoruiu vy chitaete, uzhe ne ta, kotoroi ona byla do togo, kak vy nachali ee chitat'.
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David Mitchell |
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6859340
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The Ticket-wallah, whose pimples bubbled as I watched, was as intractably dense as his counterpart in King's Cross. The Corporation breeds them from the same stem cell.
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David Mitchell |
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ace799d
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So I telled her my 'maginin's o' places from old books'n'pics in the school'ry. Lands where the Fall'd never falled, towns bigger'n all o' Big I. an' towers o' stars'n'suns blazin' higher'n Mauna Kea, bays of not jus' one Prescient Ship but a mil'yun, Smart boxes what make delish grinds more'n anyun can eat, Smart Pipes what gush more brew'n anyun can drink, places where it's always spring an' no sick, no knucklyin' an' no slavin'. Places w..
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David Mitchell |
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daeb496
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Yay, when it came to faces, pretty lies was better'n scabbin' true
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David Mitchell |
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ce862e2
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Why does any martyr cooperate with his judases?
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David Mitchell |
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d846dd1
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Sulkers Binge on lonely fantasies.
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David Mitchell |
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4b85b83
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I recalled my father-in-law's aphorism "To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom..." & I pretended to extract a speck from my eye."
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human-nature
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David Mitchell |
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4c6373c
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I succumbed. Late-fifteenth-century verb, Old French succomber or Latin succumbere, but a basic necessity of the human condition, especially mine.
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David Mitchell |
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944b3a2
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La risata e anarchia e blasfema. I tiranni fanno bene a temerla.
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David Mitchell |
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ab2b40a
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He chiseled open the fault lines in the others' personalities.
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David Mitchell |
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bffc020
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A trio of teenagers, dressed like Prostitute Barbie, approached, drift-netting the width of the pavement.
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David Mitchell |
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b4fa229
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his deceased wife, watches her husband from the photograph on his console desk.
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David Mitchell |
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5f53c0d
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Senecas Warnung an Nero: Ganz gleich, wie viele von uns du totest, dein Nachfolger wird nicht darunter sein
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David Mitchell |
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8c7a4a7
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The organs of Venus are familiar to all, but oh, my brothers, the organ of Saturn is the bladder.
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David Mitchell |
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a44fdfb
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Goat tongue is a gift, you got it from the day you're borned or you ain't got it. If you got it, goats'll heed your say-so, if you ain't, they'll jus' trample you muddy an' stand there scornin'.
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David Mitchell |
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34f31ea
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Essex raised its ugly head. When i was a scholarship boy at the local grammar, son of a city-hall toiler on the make, this country was synonymous with liberty, success, and Cambridge. Now look at it. Shopping malls and housing estates pursue their creeping invasion of our ancient land. A North Sea wind snatched frilly clouds in its teeth and scarpered off to the midlands. The countryside proper began at last. My mother had a cousin out here..
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David Mitchell |
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aa1a593
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Anticipating the end of the world is humanity's oldest pastime.
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David Mitchell |
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92f5545
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we cross, crisscross, and recross our old tracks like figure skaters.
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David Mitchell |
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be18029
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If you'd cured Henry the Seventh's TB with a course of ethambutol, or given Isaac Newton an hour's access to the Hubble telescope, or shown an off-the-shelf 3-D printer to the regulars at the Captain Marlow in the 1980s, you would have had the M-word thrown your way, too. Some magic is merely normality that you're not yet used to.
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David Mitchell |
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07d3208
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Prayer may be a placebo for the disease of helplessness, but placebos can make you feel better.
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placebo
prayer
religion
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David Mitchell |
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9c72240
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That's the weird part: I know I don't know you. So how come I feel like I do?
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David Mitchell |
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40f792d
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Attaining immortality is easier than controlling its terms and conditions.
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David Mitchell |
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13e85b4
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Mortality is inscribed in your cellular structure, and you say you're not ill? Look at the painting. Look at it." She nods towards The Adoration of the Magi. I obey. I always will. "Thirteen subjects, if you count them, like the Last Supper. Shepherds, the Magi, the relatives. Study their faces, one by one. Who believes this newborn manikin can one day conquer death? Who wants proof? Who suspects the Messiah is a false prophet? Who knows th..
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David Mitchell |
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c8a099c
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If consumers found fulfillment at any meaningful level, she extemporized, corpocracy would be finished.
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contentment
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David Mitchell |
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c05a29f
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Orito pictures the human mind as a loom that weaves disparate threads of belief, memory and narrative into an entity whose common name is Self, and which sometimes calls itself Perception.
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David Mitchell |
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759a62c
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The wheel of seasons is broken, says the spring pattern this autumn day, and so am I.
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David Mitchell |
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837fc03
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that human hunger birthed the Civ'lize, but human hunger killed it too.
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human
inspirational
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David Mitchell |
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cbecc87
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I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.
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David Mitchell |
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b86924f
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A wrongheaded world," sighed Shiloh Davydov, "where women needs must deny their gender for fear that their ideas will be dismissed."
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David Mitchell |
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6c7216c
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Perfume counters in department stores, Holly Deblin smells of, the middle of July, and cinnamon Tic Tacs.
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love
lovers
young-love
young-lovers
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David Mitchell |
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1e83e25
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I managed to smile, thinking how Modesty is Vanity's craftier stepbrother.
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David Mitchell |
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b1b1e15
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Yet what are we without our addictions? Insipid. Flavourless.
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David Mitchell |
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9d0e66d
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Our right to be here is weaker by the minute.
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David Mitchell |
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5d09e3b
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Do we use the L-word because we mean it, or because we want to kid ourselves into thinking we're still in that blissful state?
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David Mitchell |
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a035924
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But the paranormal is persuasive; why else does religion persist?
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David Mitchell |
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370693b
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Hesitations're yeses or nos if the questioner already knows the answer.
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David Mitchell |
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c9a208a
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These...xistential qualms you suffer, they just mean you're truly human. I aked how I might remedy them. "You don't remedy them. You live thru them."
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stoicism
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David Mitchell |
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c11b66d
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Laboring types surrounded me with bad teeth, parrot voices, and unfounded optimism.
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David Mitchell |
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ef44bb3
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Grin and bear it! Remember your heritage! You're a Japanese law-abiding straight! You grin and bear it until your Zimmer frame buckles and your drinking water is mercury oxide, and our whole country is one coast-to-coast parking lot.
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david mitchell |
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eb0e5f6
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Your employers evince great faith in your talents, Mr Ewing, to entrust you with business neccessitating such a long & arduous voyage." I replied that, yes, I was a senior enough notary to be entrusted with my present assignment, but a junior enough scrivener to be obligated to accept the same."
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David Mitchell |