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9f7dc0b
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Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.
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Don DeLillo |
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01209df
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In the morning I walked to the bank. I went to the automated teller machine to check my balance. I inserted my card, entered my secret code, tapped out my request. The figure on the screen roughly corresponded to my independent estimate, feebly arrived at after long searches through documents, tormented arithmetic. Waves of relief and gratitude flowed over me. The system had blessed my life. I felt its support and approval. The system hardw..
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Don DeLillo |
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3364428
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When I get real high I can feel the space between sounds.
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Don DeLillo |
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f8b0b94
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I see my son in the small tumult of the moment. He knows he has to handle this alone and does it conscientiously enough, shaking the man's hand, nodding madly. He is not experienced at hearty rapport, of course, but his effort is meticulous and touching. He knows the man's pleasure is important. He has seen this everywhere on the island and he has listened to his mother. We must be more precise in the details of our responses. This is how w..
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Don DeLillo |
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7f9537e
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At first it was only a nuisance. Now it's a nuisance that threatens to become a way of life.
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Don DeLillo |
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7aa684f
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It is the neon epic of Saturday night.
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Don DeLillo |
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673bc82
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Once you start a file, Delphine, it's just a matter of time before the material comes pouring in. Notes, lists, photos, rumors. Every bit and piece and whisper in the world that doesn't have a life until someone comes along to collect it. It's all been waiting just for you.
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Don DeLillo |
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caaeabc
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Sometimes it was hard to say things. Things were so complicated. People might resent what you said. They might use your remarks against you. They might take you seriously and act upon your words, actually do something. They might not even hear you, which perhaps was the only thing worth hoping for. But it was more complicated than that. The sheer effort of speaking. Easier to stay apart, leave things as they are, avoid responsibility for re..
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Don DeLillo |
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67011d8
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Shoes are like people. They adjust to situations.
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Don DeLillo |
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d7aef15
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I had to wonder whether this interval had any more spread and breadth than just another sequestered moment, bordered by closed doors. We
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Don DeLillo |
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6327b2b
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I understood that he did not see the person he was talking to. He had the drifter's inclination to be impervious to names and faces. These were interchangeable components room to room, country to country. He did not talk so much as narrate. He traced a wavy line, his, and there was usually someone willing to be the random body that he told his stories to.
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Don DeLillo |
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80e17cd
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I'll tell you what it means, these orbiting sensors that can hear us in our beds. It means the end of loyalty. The more complex the systems, the less conviction in people. Conviction will be drained out of us. Devices will drain us, make us vague and pliant.
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Don DeLillo |
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b545872
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Our lives, examined carefully in all their affinities and links, abound with suggestive meaning, with themes and involute turnings we have not allowed ourselves to see completely.
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Don DeLillo |
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45964b3
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It was the best kind of class to have in the afternoon, an exercise in almost pure language, demanding nothing more than fractional consciousness since there wasn't the slightest hope of understanding what those poems were all about, and we drowsed and smiled, happy in our own little angel-infancy, snug in our Thamesian punt, and when the sonic belch of experimental jets went ripping across the desert we came close to applauding the symboli..
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Don DeLillo |
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2380a86
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Choice is a subtle form of disease.
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Don DeLillo |
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2bd739c
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We learn nothing from the stereotypes around us, not even that we're all the same.
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Don DeLillo |
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6a5a493
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It takes centuries to invent the primitive.
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Don DeLillo |
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af1b5bd
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When times are bad, people feel compelled to overeat.
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overeating
eating
eating-disorder
eat
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Don DeLillo |
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5c9266c
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She is the kind of of child who feels a protective tenderness towards her own beginnings. It is part of her strategy in a world of displacements to make every effort to restore and preserve, keep things together for their value as remembering objects, a way of fastening herself to a life.
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Don DeLillo |
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2e3fbaa
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This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature.
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Don DeLillo |
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00b7c30
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In the afternoon I drank Coke and wrote poetry.
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Don DeLillo |
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4cc1b21
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The only problem I had was that my whole life was a lesson in the effect of echoes, that I was living in the third person.
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Don DeLillo |
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8e4c221
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Don't worry about me," he said. "The little limp means nothing. People my age limp. A limp is a natural thing at a certain age. Forget the cough. It's healthy to cough. You move the stuff around. The stuff can't harm you as long as it doesn't settle in one spot and stay there for years. So the cough's all right. So is the insomnia. The insomnia's all right. What do I gain by sleeping? You reach an age when every minute of sleep is one less ..
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Don DeLillo |
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ca3f81e
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Where do you live?" "In the hearts of men," Sullivan said."
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Don DeLillo |
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e9983c2
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All that incoherence. Selection, election, option, alternative. All behind him now. Codes and formats. Courses of action. Values, bias, predilection. Choice is a subtle form of disease.
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Don DeLillo |
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2c6696f
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There is a thing about the trust of a dog that makes up for a lot of heartache we take in this life.
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pets
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Don DeLillo |
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caeb8ed
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This was the first of the St. Augustines. Previous memos had borne messages from Zwingli, Levi-Strauss, Rilke, Chekhov, Tillich, William Blake, Charles Olson and a Kiowa chief named Satanta. Naturally the person responsible for these messages became known throughout the company as the Mad Memo-Writer. I never referred to him that way because it was much too obvious a name. I called him Trotsky. There was no special reason for choosing Trots..
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Don DeLillo |
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2fa9557
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Solitude asks no pledges of anyone.
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Don DeLillo |
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2309a9d
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The ruins stood above the hissing traffic like some monument to doomed expectations.
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Don DeLillo |
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4052e17
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The long soft life is what I feel I'm settling into and the only question is how deadly it will turn out to be. But
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Don DeLillo |
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bd7b866
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Maybe there is no death as we know it. Just documents changing hands.
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Don DeLillo |
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31f0d56
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When you see a thing like that, a thing that becomes a newsreel, you begin to feel you are a carrier of some solemn scrap of history.
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Don DeLillo |
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df5e273
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I know it's thankless to be sensible in the face of someone's primitive distrust.
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Don DeLillo |
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2e74643
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Maybe it was the hip-sprung way she moved, high-assed and shiny, alert to surfaces, like a character in a B movie soaked in alimony and gin.
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Don DeLillo |
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1d525d4
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Shouldn't death , I thought, be a swandive, graceful, white-winged and smooth, leaving the surface undisturbed? Blue jeans tumbled in the dryer.
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Don DeLillo |
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dca33ee
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What about the Americans?" "Eerie people. Genetically engineered to play squash and work weekends."
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Don DeLillo |
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ed1f12d
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Catastrophe is our bedtime story.
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Don DeLillo |
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ea170d2
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Even at a distance, her mouth showed the small pursed conceit of a remark in the making.
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Don DeLillo |
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3493e34
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Tourism is the march of stupidity.
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Don DeLillo |
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d4e54e0
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A Greek will never say anything he hasn't already said a thousand times." Her husband Charles reprimanded me for not knowing the word. To Charles it was a mark of one's respect for other cultures to know the local terms of abuse and the words for sex acts and natural wastes."
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Don DeLillo |
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d19a4ea
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I want to die and be finished forever. Don't you want to die?" he said. "I don't know." "What's the point of living if we don't die at the end of it?" In"
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Don DeLillo |
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bde43ff
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What ambiguity there is in exalted things. We despise them a little.
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Don DeLillo |
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940b17e
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To Charles it was a mark of one's respect for other cultures to know the terms of local abuse and the words for sex acts and natural wastes.
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Don DeLillo |
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7a00d76
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Everything that has happened drives me in that direction, theoretically. But I don't feel reduced by my abstinence, as I did in the past. The craving is gone and maybe this is what reduces me. *
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Don DeLillo |