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e9f58f0
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What?" he would say, practically snapping to attention. What I had thought to be of passing interest would now take on profound fascination as I read it aloud, and Pat would inhale it. A few hours or a few days later, he would give it back, in talk or as gifts--books, records, tickets to a performance. I would like to tell Joe what a peculiar and suffocating feeling it got to be, to be attended to so closely, to have every idle remark sucke..
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Jane Smiley |
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756420d
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She was almost sixty and she had not been to London, or Paris, or Rome, and there was no going there now. Yes, she was balanced, as she had gotten into the habit of congratulating herself for being. But, she saw, she was balanced on a very narrow perch.
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Jane Smiley |
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662c3ed
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And of course there was no help for it, except recalling bits of conversations she had overheard from time to time about marriage. That's what knitting groups and sewing groups were for, wasn't it? Commiserating about marriage.
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Jane Smiley |
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67b56e0
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Everyone starved. Starvation is a potent weapon, and the Bolsheviks are happy to wield it. The cheapest way to get rid of the opposition is to starve them. Lenin did it the expensive way, shooting them, but the Soviets can no longer afford that.
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soviets
repression
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Jane Smiley |
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b00e3ae
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It was the exact combination of the ephemeral and the eternal that a dying man needed to know about.
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Jane Smiley |
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0bbf7a7
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Once again, the curious thing was how strange and forceful the world was, how it battered and clanged and could not be withstood, and yet some individuals withstood it while others did not.
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Jane Smiley |
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3a0ba79
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what would happen to others, not oneself. Rosanna thought that was what accounted for the crowd's
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Jane Smiley |
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d1db9ef
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But he was sixty-two when I was, born, and the novelty of daughters had worn away long before.
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late-in-life-children
fathers-and-daughters
parenthood
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Jane Smiley |
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3213ba4
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If you don't furnish your brain with what everyone knows, then it will furnish itself with what no one else knows!
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Jane Smiley |
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ff8d1c4
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she had a cloth in her hands. She said, "Frankie hungry?"
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Jane Smiley |
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b27fee4
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It was imperative that the growing discord in our family be made to appear minor. The indication that my father truly was beside himself was the way he had carried his argument with us to others. But we couldn't give in to that--we were well trained. We knew our roles and our strategies without hesitation and without consultation. The paramount value of looking right is not something you walk away from after a single night. After such a nig..
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Jane Smiley |
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244832f
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surprised. Then everyone, by unspoken
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Jane Smiley |
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2ce5483
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the two of them prayed to Jesus that they might learn their lessons sooner rather than later, and that they would be gentle lessons rather than hard lessons.
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Jane Smiley |
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1a01b70
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but from this distance, the velvety reds, flashing yellows and glassy whites [of the roses] seemed to break up the light of the summer sun into its various elements and cast it back far more brilliantly than any other flower ever could, seemed not exactly of the earth, but of space and air itself.
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Jane Smiley |
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7373476
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who was wearing a very handsome
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Jane Smiley |
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34a562f
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Compared with Iowa, Kansas City was a strange world. The Halls where she worked was in the most elegant place she'd ever been at that point, a made-up town for shopping, a Fifth Avenue on the prairie (when she got to the real Fifth Avenue, she wasn't very impressed, because the Country Club Plaza had spoiled her).
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Jane Smiley |
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92fbbf0
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Her parents took her very seriously; she had trained them, with a combination of treats and punishments, to allow her to do as she pleased and express herself, and to pay attention to her opinions. Thanks
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Jane Smiley |
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5ef0247
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JOE COULDN'T STAND the noise. The giant room they
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Jane Smiley |
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0884794
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In truth Mr Jonas Silk was as niggardly as he was jealous, and my sister Beatrice had as much interest in Kansas as she did in the czar of all the Russias, and so my brother Mr. Horace Silk worked out his plans in a white heat of frustrated eagerness.
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Jane Smiley |
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8af5c90
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What Is Really Going On in Spain? was another. Who's the Boss? was about whether members of the
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Jane Smiley |
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55293b0
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Mary had nice clothes, too, ones she had worked hard for over the summer,
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Jane Smiley |
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df8d640
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You don't make 'em trot for one thing and run for the other.
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Jane Smiley |
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491790e
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Northerners, even abolitionists, knew more about how and why to chop down the slavery tree than they ever knew what to do with its sour fruit.
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Jane Smiley |
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a4199dd
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We knew right off how to think of them but not precisely how to feel about them.
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Jane Smiley |
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e1ee491
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It didn't occur to us. We had swum in the ocean of religion all our lives and not gotten wet.
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jane smiley |
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9f0e8e0
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he hadn't had her as a teacher, which meant that he could tell her what
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Jane Smiley |
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771e094
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Arthur said, You must know that you don't love children for being good or bad. I know you know that. Why do you love them? Because you do, said Arthur. Because they don't know what's coming and maybe you do.
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life
children
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Jane Smiley |
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961b988
|
After him came a cast of characters out of her worst nightmares--Linda Chavez, Arch Puddington, twenty others as bad, all of whom, she could imagine, had a secret password such as a derogatory remark about Toni Morrison, whom Margaret considered a goddess.
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Jane Smiley |
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5ee06cf
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Rosie and Mary had taken only a 10 percentage of this privilege - they were three minutes late leaving their room and took the second bus that went past rather than the first just so they could feel themselves standing at a bus stop in Manhattan, New York, surrounded by people who were short, dark and voluble rather than tall, blond and silent. The fatal part was the bus they got on. They, of course stood, because they had been taught to do..
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midwesterners
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Jane Smiley |
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e8092b5
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Linda was just born when I had my first miscarriage, and for a while, six months maybe, the sight of those two babies, whom I had loved and cared for with real interest and satisfaction, affected me like a poison. All my tissues hurt when I saw them, when I saw Rose with them, as if my capillaries were carrying acid into the furthest reaches of my system. I was so jealous, and so freshly jealous every time I saw them, that I could hardly sp..
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Jane Smiley |
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cfdde08
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Hmmph, said Mrs. Walker, or rather, without speaking, she launched this hmmph into the air of the room and allowed it to float there.
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Jane Smiley |
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c36f0fa
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She said, "Some are born bossy, some achieve bossiness, and some have bossiness thrust upon them."
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Jane Smiley |
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452090d
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I dream about standing in the lunch line naked. It's always the lunch line in ninth grade. Nakedness dreams are very common. I suppose they are.
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Jane Smiley |
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8b2fe1f
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It is hard to know whether an air of self-confidence precedes or follows success.
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Jane Smiley |
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d5c04d1
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We watched the swimmers and sunbathers and I thought about this. Had I faced all the facts? It seemed like I had, but actually, you never know, just by remembering, how many facts you were allowed to have faced. Your own endurance might be a pleasant fiction allowed you by others who've really faced the facts. The eerie feeling this thought gave me made me shiver in the hot wind.
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Jane Smiley |
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f903415
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Sometimes these days Dean felt like picking up the phone and calling his buddy Michael Jordan and chortling with him over how he'd played Continental Dairy Industries off against National Milk, but of course he didn't have Michael's number.
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Jane Smiley |
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93df88a
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So all I have is the knowledge that I saw! That I saw without being afraid and without turning away, and that I didn't forgive the unforgivable. Forgiveness is a reflex for when you can't stand what you know. I resisted that reflex. That's my sole, solitary, lonely accomplishment.
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Jane Smiley |
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163fe2c
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It was not that he felt that the world would damage or hurt Frankie in any way, it was much more that there were plenty of things out in the world that Frankie would learn about, and that he would then have no scruples at all.
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Jane Smiley |
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07f4b9c
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One signal conversation, which she had lingered near for ten minutes, between two woman German professors, had concerned a support group they both belonged to for people with an overwhelming compulsion to tear up their clothes and braid them into rag rugs.
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Jane Smiley |
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f6dfc28
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He was turning out to be one of those men whose interest diminished as they got to know you. You got into this pattern of trying to be interesting by revealing more and more of yourself, like a salesman unpacking his sample bag, but the man, though he looked like he was smiling and paying attention, was really shaking his head internally--not that, not that either, no I don't think so, not today.
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Jane Smiley |
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45dbe3b
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She looked out the window of her office, feeling that she had passed through a doorway that she had never realized was there.
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Jane Smiley |
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9989576
|
Daddy thinks history starts fresh every day, every minute, that time itself begins with the feelings he's having right now. That's how he keeps betraying us, why he roars at us with such conviction. We have to stand up to that, and say, at least to ourselves, that what he's done before is still with us, still right here in this room until there's true remorse. Nothing will be right until there's that." "He looks so, sort of, weakened." "W..
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family
humiliation
repentance
remorse
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Jane Smiley |
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d38752d
|
He'd said, "Remember that Chinese curse, 'May you live in interesting times'? The dairy farmer's curse is, may you have an interesting herd of cows." --
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Jane Smiley |
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8bfad35
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and the horticulturalists really believed that gardening would save the world that agriculture was destroying.
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Jane Smiley |